does?”
“The governor has one every few weeks, and there are always a few majors at each reception. I hadn’t been to one in about a year. It was pleasant enough. Good food, but the receptions are almost like an informal inspection.”
Somehow, Quaeryt doubted that his presence and that of Skarpa at the same reception had been any sort of coincidence.
“What did you think, scholar?”
“I thought both the governor and the lady were very impressive. In different ways, of course.”
“She’s a pretty woman. You talked to her. I saw.”
“Just for a few moments, about Variana and Bovaria, and the music she played. The governor is quietly protective.”
“He might be. His wife died years ago. They never had any children, and he never found anyone else. That’s what Phargos told me. He’d know.”
“I haven’t seen the governor at services.”
“He doesn’t attend often. He talks to Phargos, though.”
“How did Rescalyn become governor?”
Skarpa laughed. “He was the submarshal under Fhayt, but went back to Solis with Lord Chayar. Then, after Fhayt made that mess with the Pharsi women-do you know about that?”
“I heard that there was trouble between the local women and soldiers. One thing led to another and Fhayt leveled part of Tilbora.”
“That’s about right. It happened a year or so before Lord Chayar died. Even back then, Straesyr was princeps, but he was in the north, talking to the factors around Noira. Fhayt was always a little hotheaded, and Straesyr usually calmed him down, but … he wasn’t there. People got hurt, and some more soldiers got killed. The Pharsi mostly moved south, and their tariffs went with them, and Fhayt increased tariffs-”
“Tariffs are higher here? Because of the war? To pay back the cost?”
“That’s what Phargos says. In another three years, they go back to the rates for the rest of Telaryn.”
“Chayar was furious, but then some brigands attacked Fhayt while he was on his way to meet with a High Holder, and that made Lord Chayar even more angry. Word was that an attack and an uprising together showed incompetence and stupidity. He sent Rescalyn to replace Fhayt, but he did give Fhayt a stipend. That was if he returned to Solis immediately. If he didn’t, he’d be tried for treason and incompetence. It didn’t matter. He died of the flux on the trip back.” Skarpa’s last words were laconically ironic.
“And Straesyr remained as princeps?”
“He’s good at it, they say. He was a submarshal in charge of supplies and the like. He can talk to the merchanters and the crafters’ guilds. He probably would have been a better governor than Fhayt, but Fhayt was a good battlefield commander.”
“Some field commanders aren’t so good once they leave the field.”
“Some aren’t good in the field. Rescalyn’s gotten rid of those. There’s one good thing about all these little battles with the hill types. We can see which of the undercaptains are good and which aren’t, and sometimes pick the good ones when they’re still squad leaders.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but I’m a scholar, not a soldier,” Quaeryt admitted. “How good are the hill fighters?”
“Good? I wouldn’t call them good. They’re sneaky. Always setting ambushes and traps. You have to keep your eyes open all the time. It took a while to get used to that.” Skarpa laughed again. “That’s another reason for all the maneuver training when companies come back from the hills. The governor doesn’t want the officers and men to forget how they’ll need to fight against the Bovarians or the Antiagons.”
Quaeryt nodded. “What do you think I’ll learn on your patrols?”
“How to keep your eyes open and watch for the smallest signs.”
“I meant about Tilbor.”
“They’re people like people anywhere, except the hill folk are more selfish and meaner. They think everything they see should belong to them. Don’t think a thing about putting a shaft through anyone who wanders into their woods, or what they claim as theirs.”
“Are they good with bows?”
“I wish they weren’t. We usually lose a few men on every rotation, more officers and squad leaders than rankers. They single them out.”
“You’re still here, after all that?”
Skarpa offered a crooked grin. “I said you need to keep your eyes and ears open for any little thing that’s different.”
Quaeryt was feeling more uneasy with each mille that he rode from Tilbora.
48
The sun was slanting into his face late on Meredi afternoon as Quaeryt rode beside Captain Meinyt up a dusty road rising gradually to the top of a low rise. For the past day, the battalion had ridden due north from the Albhor River largely through croplands. The wide valley behind them held hundreds of moderately sized fields, each one cultivated by a family, with most of the crop going, Quaeryt suspected, to High Holder Dymaetyn, the local High Holder, according to Meinyt. The rise they traveled was mostly pasture, with scattered brush and trees, but all trees and brush growth had been cleared fifty yards back on each side of the road.
Meinyt’s company was the second one in the column, behind more than a hundred mounts, and Quaeryt’s kerchief came away from his face tan with sweat and dust.
“You’re sweating all the time, scholar. Your mare’s the one doing the work, not you,” said Meinyt with a laugh.
“I’m a scholar, not a mounted officer. This is work for me,” parried Quaeryt as he blotted his forehead and neck once again. He couldn’t say for certain, but he thought he was finding it just a touch easier to carry the light shields he imaged for longer and longer-almost a glass at a time. It was still work.
“You should have been here last summer. It was really beastly, almost as hot as Solis, and there was never any wind. In Solis, or Tilbora, at least you can find places where there’s a sea breeze. Here, in between the high hills and the lowlands, when it gets hot, it gets really hot.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t here.”
“The winter’s worse,” continued Meinyt cheerfully. “The clouds are so thick there’s never any sun, and when there is it doesn’t warm anything up. The snow gets deeper and deeper, and, sometimes, for the last part of Ianus, we can barely get couriers between Boralieu and Tilbora.”
From the top of the rise, looking to the left of the road and to the west, Quaeryt could see another valley below, if not nearly so wide as the last, which held a smaller rise about two-thirds of the way across the valley toward the steeper-and largely forested-hills to the west.
“There’s Boralieu,” announced Meinyt.
Quaeryt blotted his forehead again and studied the “outpost.” It scarcely fit his conception of an outpost, looking more like a smaller version of the Telaryn Palace, except the walls were of a reddish brown stone, possibly sandstone, which was far easier to cut and quarry than granite or graystone. Even so, the walls had to be several hundred yards from end to end, and there were certainly a number of stone structures within the walls.
“How many companies are stationed here at any one time?”
“They’re really not stationed … they’re rotated in and out every month, even in winter, except sometimes there’s no rotation in the last weeks of Ianus and the first weeks of Fevier. The standing complement is two battalions, sometimes three, and a company of engineers.”
