11: The Soldier’s Tale

 

At twenty-five, Memo had been a penniless exile on crutches. At fifty he was an honored citizen, famous, wealthy, and miserable. Or if not quite miserable, then discontented. Unsatisfied.

He had been fortunate, perhaps too fortunate. He knew of hundreds who had fled his homeland at the same time as he. They included men of skill and wit, men of courage and character, but very few had prospered as he had. He enjoyed respect and reputation, a luxurious home with many servants. He loved his wife and daughter and received their love in return.

If he had achieved all this by courage, exertion, and endurance—or even by simple fortune, chance flight of arrow or stroke of sword in battle—then he could take some pride in it, but he feared it had all been a blessing from Bargar. If so, then he was grateful, and that was not enough.

Just before Memo had arrived on the island, the Emir had approved an expansion of the Algazanian Foreign Legion. On the strength of his experience fighting the Horsefolk and the wound he had received at Mill Creek, Memo was accepted into the ranks. He proved himself brave, loyal, and obedient, but he also paid heed to his family god, whose warnings frequently steered him aside from death or disaster. In the next twenty years he rose to the uppermost ranks of the Emir’s army, leading the Algazanian forces to victory on more than one field.

At some point he found the time to woo and win the daughter of a prominent merchant. Their marriage was still a joy to them. Memo sometimes wondered if his many long absences had helped there—if the two of them had never been long enough together to grow bored. But at least he had not worn out his wife with childbearing as most men did.

Now he was too old to be a soldier; he had no other skills. Trumpets announced his entry when he chose to visit the Emir’s palace, but he detested the intrigues of court. His brothers-in-law ran the family business competently. If they were no more than average honest in their dealings with outsiders, still they did not cheat their sister, so money was no problem.

At fifty Memo could hope for another ten years of life, or even more. What was he to do with it?

Free his homeland, said his conscience. The tales from the Land Between the Seas were heartrending. Vandok the Ruthless ruled it still, striking down any who might ever threaten him-even, it was said, many of his own sons. His killers roamed at will across the country, randomly ravaging and slaying, competing in atrocity. The surest way to the king’s favor was to perpetrate some new horror upon the population south of the ranges, or at least stir up a desperate revolt that would provide sport for the army. Month after month, gangs of youths and maidens were led north in chains to be sacrificed to Hool.

The seven cities lay in ruins, the countryside was devastated. Foreign merchants shunned the ports, because the people could offer nothing in trade. The only exceptions were slavers, who had only to open their hatches to have the holds filled with eager volunteers.

The exiles in Algazan provided what help they could, but it was insignificant. Few of them had money to spare. Once in a while they would charter a ship and offer free transportation overseas-not often to Algazan itself, for the Emir reasonably feared the flood that would have ensued had he permitted it. Even this small effort was rarely a kindness. The lot of the emigrants in whatever land they reached was likely to be little better than serfdom. That was well known, and yet vessels had foundered in the harbors under the weight of refugees clambering aboard.

Not everyone had fled or would flee if given the chance. Memo knew of several inhabitants of the Land Between the Seas who were distantly related to him. He had offered them refuge and been declined; he had done what he could to help them, although gold never arrived safely.

Always the exiles talked of gathering an army of liberation and invading the Land to drive out the barbarians, but such a campaign would need far greater resources than they could ever muster. Moreover, no one could seriously believe that the attempt would succeed. Vandok was too expert a tyrant and Hool too strong a god.

Thus, a few days after his fiftieth birthday, Great-memory of Bargar, known as Memo to his family and friends, to the government as Memo Pasha, was a restless, uneasy man.

Late one night, having bade farewell to the friends he had been entertaining, he paced his house in darkness, unable to rest. His wife had long since gone to bed. As always, the talk that night had been of the sufferings of the Land Between the Seas. As always, the news had been bad. As always, the solutions suggested had been wild-eyed and impracticable. Memo Pasha had seen enough causes in his time to know a hopeless one, and every plan proposed at the table had been more desperate than the one before.

A man could not pace forever. He came at last to his study and the niche where Bargar resided. It was time for bed, and hence time to say his nightly prayer. He sank down to his knees, as he had done so many times before, and he made offering as he had seen his father do, long ago. Where his father had offered copper, Memo now offered gold, adding the coin to seven already lying there before the god’s paws. Sometimes the hoard would increase to a score or more, but sooner or later Bargar would speak on the matter, ordering Memo to buy his wife a new coach with it, or impose sudden wealth on a certain beggar, or any one of a dozen inexplicable things. It was the god’s gold to do with as he pleased.

When the nightly offering was over, Memo would speak of his gratitude and his unhappiness. Always he would end with the simple prayer: “Tell me how I can help them, Most Holy Father.”

Sometimes the god would answer, sometimes he would not-gods and tigers both tend to be unpredictable. When he did reply, the reply would always be much the same: “I am your god, my son, not the god of your people. You I can guard and prosper, they are not my concern. I cannot stand against Hool, for I am only a little god. Small gods should not strive to be great gods-your ancestors discovered the folly of that. Be content with the passing pleasures of life.”

That night Memo stubbornly spoke his prayer again: “Tell me how I can help them, Most Holy Father.”

That night Bargar said simply, “Go out to your gate and find the boy who is waiting there. Bring him in, hear him, and believe.”

He looked about thirteen or fourteen years old-skinny as a fishing pole, not notably clean, but seemingly bright and healthy. He wore a grubby loincloth and clutched a small bundle in his puny arms as if it were more precious than the Emir’s crown. His hair hung in tangles around his pinched features, one eye was puffed and discolored from a blow. He stood in the light of Memo’s lantern, grinning up at him, gasping huge breaths as if he had been running, but Memo had been observing him for several minutes through the spy hole and knew that the lad had not been running. He had been sitting cross-legged in the dirt as if content to sit there all night. He might have been there for hours.

“Pasha, I was told to come and see you!” He spoke with a childish treble, in the tongue of the Godless.

“Who are you and who told you?”

“I am Juss, Pasha. Sure-justice of Kraw is my real name. And Kraw told me.”

Kraw? Memo had a vague remembrance of a god by that name, but could not recall whose he had been. “Then you had best come in, Sure-justice. I am Great-memory of Bargar.” Kraw? Kraw?

The youngster had caked blood on his back. He had obviously been in a fight recently. He stank of onions. He knew enough to remove his sandals at the house door, although they could not have been dirtier than his feet.

Viewed under the many lamps of the study, he seemed even bonier and grubbier than before, and the nits in his hair showed. His eyes were huge with wonder as he inspected the furniture, the rugs, the pictures, the drapes. His gaze came to rest on the niche with its amber tiger and its gold. He bowed to it and then shot a worried glance at Memo, wondering if he had offended.

“Bargar, my god,” Memo said. “He told me to bring you in and hear what you have to say, Sure-justice.”

The gamin grinned with delight, his adult teeth seeming far too large for his emaciated face. “Then perhaps my god has been speaking with your god, Pasha? Holy Kraw never spoke to me before tonight and what-”

“Wait!” Memo laughed. “Serious business takes time. You sit…” He chose a plain wooden chair that could be washed later and pulled it forward. “…here. Now, may I offer…” Wine would knock the kid out cold. Food? Of course food! “I will order something for you to eat. What would you like?”

Already perched on the chair, the boy just gaped at him.

“Come on!” Memo said. “What would you like most?”

Sure-justice of Kraw glanced around the room again and whispered, “Meat?” as if he were asking for the Emir’s throne. He licked his lips.

Memo reached for the bell rope. “When was the last time you tasted meat?”

“Don’t remember. Had fish last summer, twice!”

“Mm. May I ask what you are carrying?”

“Kraw, Pasha. He said to bring him.”

Memo had just settled on a chair-a padded silk one-but he sprang to his feet at that news. To bring two gods into one room was generally regarded as disrespectful at best and unwise at worst, although it seemed that in this case the gods themselves had arranged this meeting. He wondered what correct protocol could be in such a situation. Nobody crowded a tiger.

“Perhaps he should be unwrapped and put in a place of honor. That shelf?”

Nodding eagerly, the boy proceeded to unwrap the cloth and reveal what appeared to be a black rock. “Kraw’s a dragon’s tooth!” he said proudly. He laid it on the shelf, bowed to it, then hurried back to his seat.

Nobody crowded dragons, either. What a combination!

A suspiciously sleepy-looking servant knelt in the doorway. Memo ordered meat and bread, sweet cakes and fruit-nothing rich, just simple and plentiful, enough for two men. And quickly. Then he sat back and smiled at the bright dark eyes. The boy would burst if he was not allowed to speak soon.

“Now, Sure-justice of Kraw, what did your god instruct you to tell me?”

Words exploded out of the boy, words that in two or three minutes turned his listener’s world on its head. Sea-breaker of Kraw! Of course!

Memo did not have time to absorb one revelation before another lit the sky. As a boy, he had fought in Sea-breaker’s troop at Mill Creek. They had fled into exile on the same ship, but in those days Sea-breaker had been a magistrate’s son and Great-memory merely a farmer’s. A year or more later, on returning from his first campaign with the Legion, Memo had heard quiet rumors that Morning-star’s daughter had escaped and was in Algazan, also. He had even heard her mentioned as one of the casualties in the Great Pestilence, ten years ago. Nothing more, nothing since.

Hear, his god had told him, and believe.

“And he said you would help, Pasha!” The tale was ended, the boy staring at Memo with agonies of hope racking his face. Despite the hour, the majordomo himself now stood in the doorway to indicate that the supper was ready.

“Come and eat, Sure-justice, while I think.” Memo conducted his young guest through to the dining room. “Sit down. Tell the man what you want to start with. Water the wine well, Mustair. Some of the red for me.”

The pasha was famous for his hospitality. When the pasha said “enough for two men,” his staff would interpret that to mean that they would be shamed and disgraced if any two men in Algazan, hand-picked for their capacity, could possibly find the offering insufficient. The boy stared in total disbelief at the loaded boards, the golden dishes, then hesitantly pointed at a platter heaped with fat pork. The footman lifted it close, expecting to serve a few slices from it. As soon as it came within reach, Juss scooped up the entire contents with both hands and crammed them into his mouth.

Hear and believe!

Memo had heard. Memo could believe the tale-indeed he was satisfied that traces of Sea-breaker’s features showed in that starving ragamuffin. Memo could believe that a war of liberation led by a grandson of Morning-star would have a vastly greater chance of success than just any old uprising. Uprisings were ten a penny under Vandok. He encouraged them. But could Memo believe that it would succeed? Could he believe that it would help the people? Another failure like Morning-star’s would turn the land to desert.

The next move, obviously, was to locate the older brother, the unschooled longshoreman who was the designated Liberator. The way Kraw and Bargar seemed to be cooking things up between them, Memo had been granted the job of training this unknown laborer into a patriot hero and war-winning general.

That’ll teach me to complain to a tiger!

Memo ordered his coach made ready and his guards alerted. He paid his staff well; if he demanded service in the middle of the night, that was no more than his due.

The boy had reported that the elder brother was prizefighting at the Snakepit, the most notorious dive in the dockside area. Full marks for courage, low marks for brains! Admittedly that was not a sissy’s way of spending an evening, but what about leadership, charisma, the totality of the dozen character traits a successful revolutionary must display? A son of Morning-star’s daughter could be expected to have courage. In fact White-thorn’s legend might be even more of an asset than her father’s. And the boy’s father, Sea-br-No…

Great-memory of Kraw almost dropped his wine goblet.

“How old is Ven, did you say?”

Juss gulped down a fistful of something. “Twenty-three, Pasha. He’ll be twenty-four in two months.”

Servants were rushing in with more dishes. The kid had cleared the first lot completely. He would probably be violently ill in a few minutes, all over the rugs. Memo was feeling almost that way himself, as if a camel had kicked him in the belly.

“Did your god tell you who Ven’s father was?”

Still chewing, Juss shook his head, but the frightened expression in his eyes showed that he suspected.

Even a dragon would not want to break that sort of news.

The Snakepit was already emptying, its patrons staggering along the alley in a welter of drunken argument and singing: losers and winners respectively. Memo’s guards closed in around their employer and forced a way through the raucous, stinking mob, then convoyed him downstairs to a cellar, almost dark now, suffocatingly opaque with tallow fumes. Not a few bodies lay amid the litter and overturned benches, most of them snoring heavily.

Juss screamed and rushed over to a corner where a group of six or seven men and boys had been laid out to mend. Two or three had recovered enough to sit up. One lay with his head at an impossible angle and would never move again. They had all given their customers good value, and most looked as if they had been marched over by the entire Algazanian army.

By the time Memo arrived, Juss was frantically embracing the largest of them, heedless of what he was doing to his new garments.

That first sight of Cold-vengeance settled any doubts about the older brother’s paternity. His fairish hair and reddish beard were unmistakable evidence of Horsefolk blood in his veins, and Vandok was reported to be a very large man. The rest of Cold-vengeance’s appearance was distinctly discouraging. He was a dazed and bloody ruin. Breathing obviously hurt him; his face and hands were pulp. Even with help, he had trouble standing. He peered at Juss as if unable to recognize this beaming, happy youth.

Sighing at the thought of the new upholstery he had just had installed in his coach, Memo sent a rider home with orders to find a doctor.

Juss began to explain to his brother. Then he changed tactics and blatantly ordered the giant to trust him and do as he was told. Ven accepted that insolence meekly-astonishingly so. Even granted that he was not completely conscious, his deference to a slip of a boy hinted that Juss was going to be the brains of the family, if he wasn’t already. It was Memo’s first inkling that he had been given two pupils, not one.

By the time he had brought his charges home, dawn was breaking and the house was in turmoil. Even his wife was up and dressed and demanding explanations, which he refused to give.

The doctor examined the fighter with distaste. Concussion, extensive bruising, loss of blood, cracked ribs, and broken fingers … Ven even had two broken toes, so his opponent had not escaped unscathed.

Memo ordered him washed and deloused, bandaged, fed, and put to bed. Mustair had prepared two rooms for the guests, but Juss insisted on sharing with his brother, and took the family god in with them, also. Memo sent everyone off about his duties, using much the same technique on his wife that the boy had used on his brother. Peace returned.

Then he shut himself in his study and touched his forehead to the floor. “Most Holy Father, is he really the son of Vandok and White-thorn?”

No reply.

“Am I expected to turn that dockside lout into a revolutionary?”

Silence. Gods did not explain.

“Holy Father, the people will never trust him! He does not look like one of us! He can barely speak the language intelligibly. He is uneducated, ignorant, probably simple!”

More silence. Tigers were stubborn.

Desperate now, Memo said, “I grant you, Father, that he is a fighter. I can teach him to use a sword, but whatever brains he had to start with have all been knocked out of him already!”

At that Bargar growled, a blood-chilling sound Memo had heard only once before in his life. He apologized abjectly and hurried off to bed.

He left his guests to their own devices for three days.

The doctors had prescribed rest and a light diet for the invalid. On the first day, Mustair reported that the two brothers were consuming more food than the entire staff of the mansion. Memo told him not to skimp, and include lots of red meat.

On the second day, Mustair passed word that the older brother was fretting about his sweetheart.

“Tell him to write a note and we shall see it is delivered,” Memo said, being fairly sure that neither brother could write. “Meanwhile, can you lay a little temptation in his path? Nothing blatant, of course … A couple of youngish … Pretty … I mean, if they understand that they will be rewarded …?”

Being a perfect majordomo, Mustair frequently knew his employer’s mind before he did. With no change of expression at all, he said, “As the Pasha has commanded, so it is.”

Being a perfect majordomo, Mustair also knew the difference between gossip and relevant information. On the third day, he reported that the bait had been taken and the other girl sent back to her normal duties. With the merest hint of a smile, he added that the man had almost certainly been a virgin.

The note never appeared.

In retrospect, the fighter’s injuries were a blessing. He was incapable of working, which meant that Memo’s miraculous intervention had saved him from starvation. The brothers might realize that they were effectively in jail, but the alternative was far worse. They would not have been human had they been able to resist the sudden luxury, food in an abundance they had never known, respite from labor and worry.

Three days would give Juss time to break the news to his brother that his father had been the monstrous Vandok.

They gave Memo time to plan a war.

To mount an invasion he would need money, weapons, fighters, and ships. An uprising of the population would need money, weapons, and leadership. Both would need superb intelligence and perfect timing, and those in turn required an organized underground in the Land itself. Both! That was where the endless dinner table chatter had gone astray. The would-be plotters had never stood back far enough from the problem to appreciate the sheer size of it, the scale, the time it would take.

Memo had the ear of the Emir, friends in the palace and the army, relatives in the Algazanian mercantile community. If it could be done at all, then he was the one to do it. Most important, he now had the grandsons of Morning-star as figureheads to rally the people.

After three days’ hard thought, he decided that it looked possible, from a purely secular point of view. It would take at least five years. Vandok himself was aging and he allowed no obvious successor to thrive, so someday there might be a chance to profit from a disorderly succession. Memo could raise and train an army in exile and a resistance movement in place. He could strike in winter when the passes were closed: Morning-star’s primary error had been to underestimate the speed of the Horsefolk’s response.

But that was the secular view. Memo could do nothing about Hool, the god of Vandok. History proved that the little gods of the people could not withstand Hool.

Realistically, therefore, the whole thing was impossible.

Memo did not think he could explain that to a tiger.

On the morning of the fourth day, he summoned the sons of White-thorn to a meeting in his garden, which was private and informal. He ordered that they be clad in the garb of their ancestors, so that he could see how they would look to the people if he did decide to proceed. Knowing that they would feel awkward in it, he dressed the same way himself, although he had not donned motley more than five or six times since he came to Algazan. He discovered that he had either lost the knack or lost a third hand, which seemed to be essential. He had to call on his body servant for assistance. Even then, he had an uneasy feeling that it would all fall off him if he made one rash move.

He had arranged three chairs in a secluded arbor, with refreshments laid out on a table between them and a smaller table placed at the side. He brought Bargar out to lie on that, so the god could listen to the discussion.

Memo rose to his feet as the brothers approached along the path. The boy’s sharp eyes noticed the god; he bowed to him first, then to his host. The man copied him, a fraction of a second later each time.

Memo was astonished by the improvement in the boy. Juss had already lost some of his skeletal thinness, and in the clear light of day his quick intelligence was obvious. With the slight frame and dark coloring of his race, Sure-justice was a believable grandson of Morning-star. He was grinning nervously, but he clutched a small bundle that must certainly contain Kraw, his dragon god, so he had foreseen the possibility of being thrown out on his ear at the end of the interview. A realist!

Ven’s battered face was halfway back to being human. His hands and right foot were bandaged and more bandages showed through the low neckline of his motley. He was undoubtedly built on a heroic scale, slabbed with muscle, and the stolidity that had seemed like dull wits before now hinted more at steady nerve and courage. In the proper setting he might impress, but he was quite obviously of Horsefolk descent. Why should the people ever trust him?

Memo offered his guests chairs. They sat down diffidently, glancing around with wonder at the flowers and shrubbery. His home must be more luxurious than anything they could ever have imagined, although it was very modest by the standards of the Algazanian nobility.

He bowed to them before taking his own seat. “I honor the grandsons of Morning-star and the sons of White-thorn, his heroic daughter.”

The boy grinned. The man said nothing, watching his host with bleary, puffed gray eyes and an air of wary distrust.

Memo poured wine, watering the boy’s. “Is there anything you lack? My house is yours.” That was a formula that he hoped they would not interpret too literally. “My servants will gladly provide anything you ask.”

Juss glanced sideways at his brother and smothered a grin.

“You are most generous, Pasha,” the man said.

Small talk was going to be difficult, obviously. Pasha Memo had absolutely nothing in common with these two, nothing to discuss except business.

“I assume that Kraw is in there?” He pointed to the package.

Juss nodded, suddenly worried. He glanced uneasily at the tiger figurine on the side table.

“You are not familiar with these odd costumes? This is what people wear in our homeland, the Land Between the Seas. They use the upper part to carry things, especially their family gods, when they need be transported. That way they are next their hearts, you see.”

The boy grinned. He snatched up his bundle and tucked it into his motley. It gave him a notable bosom on one side.

Memo turned to the elder. “I trust you are feeling better, Cold-vengeance?”

“I am very grateful for what you have done, Pasha.” The big man spoke in a guttural parody of his forefathers’ tongue.

“I am honored to aid the sons of White-thorn.”

Juss shot his brother a worried glance.

Something about Ven’s face suggested that it might have flushed had there been any of it not covered with beard or bruises. “Even the son that Vandok bred on her by public rape?”

“The guilt is not yours. Tell me how you feel about Vandok.”

“I am inclined to kill myself for being his spawn,” the big man growled. “He is a monster.”

“Given the chance, would you make war on him?”

The big man twisted his swollen lips. “Gladly!”

“Can we?” the boy demanded eagerly.

Memo sighed. “I have thought about nothing else for three days. To be honest, I don’t think we can. The barbarians are strong. To raise the people again and fail again would be a terrible crime. To finance and organize a war, if it can be done at all, would take years. I admit, though, that the sons of White-thorn would rally more support than any other leader.”

“The son of Vandok?” Ven said contemptuously.

Either the dockside lout was not as stupid as he looked, or his quick-witted brother had coached him. He had certainly gone to the heart of the problem.

Memo sipped his wine. No, the older brother was impossible. Shave off his beard and dye his hair black and he would still look like a Horseman.

What of the younger, then? He was bright and young enough to learn, although the list of things a successful revolutionary must know was mind-boggling: strategy, tactics, ordnance, finance, economics, rhetoric, politics, leadership … At the moment the lad would not know what the words meant. He did not even speak the language well.

How long? Juss was barely fourteen. Ten years might do it-but Memo was fifty. He might not have ten years, not ten good years, not in Algazan.

“I asked my god what I could do,” he said sadly. “Bargar told me to listen to Juss and believe him. I did believe you, lad! I still do, and I honor my god. But his interest is not the welfare of our people. He is the god of my own family, not anyone else’s. He may just be trying to ease my unhappiness by giving me a cause to believe in, and I find that I cannot believe in it. It will fail.

“Much as I would love to throw out the barbarians and restore freedom and democracy, my answer is no.”

Two young faces stared at him in horror and disappointment.

“You two are welcome to remain here, in my service. I promise your lives will be much more pleasant than they have been to date.”

“But Kraw told Juss…”

“With all respect to Holy Kraw, Cold-vengeance, and to my beloved Bargar, also, they are little gods. All the gods of the Land of Many Gods, as it once was, cannot stand against Hool.”

Seeming puzzled, the man looked to his brother.

The boy was grinning triumphantly. “You have forgotten the oracle, Pasha?”

Memo’s heart skipped a beat. “What oracle?”

“Hool himself!” Juss shouted. “When he ordered Hannail to invade the Land, he promised that his seed would rule it forever, didn’t he? Well, then! Why do you think our mother got Vandok to rape her?”

For a long moment, that outrageous question left Memo speechless. Then he said, “Did Kraw tell you this?”

“No,” Juss admitted. “I worked it out. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”