“What’s your point?” Andreyis asked. The lad was a little touchy where his swordwork was concerned. Well, Jaryd supposed, it couldn’t have been easy having the stuffing smacked out of him all through childhood by Sashandra Lenayin. Now, fate had afflicted another great and cocky warrior upon him. Probably he was getting sick of it.
“My point is that everyone can improve. That little lowlands snot thought he was great, but he learned that greatness in the Bacosh and greatness in Lenayin are two different things. Perhaps somewhere out there is another kingdom of warriors who make Lenays look foolish with a blade. Always assume you’re not as good as you will be tomorrow, if you work at it.”
“Listen to the pup,” Teriyan remarked, “spouting wisdom like he knows what it means. You come and talk to me when you’ve seen even half the battles I’ve fought in, youngster.”
“Aye,” said Jaryd, smiling, “you’ve fought in so many battles that last time we sparred, I could hear your bones rattling.”
“Sparring is not warfare, boy.” Teriyan looked less than his usual good-humoured self at that reminder. “When the formations line up, and you see nothing but Rhodaani Steel from one end of the horizon to the other, then you’ll learn the value of experience.”
Jaryd just smiled, and stretched out on the grass. Andreyis joined him, stretching an arm above his shoulder.
“Am I better than that Larosan boy?” Andreyis asked sombrely.
“That little fool? No contest, you’d kill him one-handed.”
“I know I’ll never be great,” said Andreyis. “I’ve had some of the best training of any man my age in Lenayin, with Kessligh and Sasha, and now you. I should be better than I am.”
“Not true,” Jaryd insisted. “Kessligh and Sasha fight with svaalverd, you’ll not learn a thing from them. I think it might have hurt you, truthfully.” Andreyis looked doubtful, but did not argue. “Look, you’re a tall lad, you’ve not filled out properly yet. Your technique is fine, you just need to get quicker, and that’ll take care of itself as you get older.”
“I’ve heard it before,” Andreyis said quietly. He said nothing more, and lay on his back gazing at the sky.
Jaryd watched him. In truth, the boy had a point. His technique was quite good, and he did quite well in set, predictable taka-dans. But when forced to improvise it often broke down, and he simply wasn’t very quick. Jaryd had never considered what it might be like to be born without the skills he took for granted. Andreyis’s admission bothered him. In Lenayin, for a young man to admit to anyone, even his closest friends, that he did not think himself much of a swordsman, was akin to admitting himself a coward.
Andreyis was an unusual boy. He was clever, but seemed to have no particular skills at which he excelled. He was good with horses, thanks to a childhood working on Kessligh and Sasha’s ranch, but even there, his natural skill with the animals was not the same as that of his younger workmate Lynette, Teriyan’s daughter. Popularity in Baerlyn eluded him, despite (or perhaps because of) his friendship with Baerlyn’s two most famous residents. He had fought in Sasha’s rebellion, and gained manhood, but not the respect that came of a man making his own way, and standing on his own two feet.
When the Baen-Tar herald had called on Baerlyn in the winter, Andreyis had been amongst the first to put forth his name. His father ran a wagon and harness trade with an elder son, and the younger son was dispensable.
This young man expects to die, Jaryd thought, watching Andreyis now. He seemed to find it preferable to continuing to live the life he had. For the first time in his life, Jaryd found himself questioning the obvious truths that all young men of Lenayin had shared since they were old enough to understand such words as “honour,” and “manhood.” Andreyis would perhaps never be a great warrior, but he was a good young man all the same. Was goodness worth nothing to a man, if greatness could not accompany it?
Jaryd’s fingers went to his left ear, and the rings that decorated from the lobe about the outer rim. Still they felt odd, even after the inflammation had died. The rings said that he was Goeren-yai, and no longer a Verenthane noble…but what did his heart say? Once he had been the heir to great wealth and power. When those were taken, he had been heir to honourable revenge. But that heirship too he had failed to claim. Was he now merely a villager, content to live out his days on a Baerlyn farm, to wed some local girl and raise half-blueblood children? And if he was to be content, why was his heart still so full of questions?
When the herald had arrived in Baerlyn, Jaryd had been second only to Andreyis in putting his name forth. His old injuries recovered, he could best even Teriyan in sparring now. He had claimed Kessligh Cronenverdt’s title of the best swordsman in Baerlyn. And Andreyis, Sasha and Lynette’s dear friend, would need someone at his side to look after him in the battles ahead. Jaryd had few ties holding him to Baerlyn, and fewer still to Lenayin itself. Yet all of these combined, however sincere, were not the complete and total reason for his decision to march to war in the Bacosh.
A horse and cart trundled down the column, its tray holding some of the last remaining firewood. A man in the back tossed down an armful to men from each campsite in passing. Two Baerlyn men rose as the cart approached, as men from neighbouring camps also rose, but now the man on the back of the cart stopped throwing down the wood, and the driver accelerated, whipping at the horse’s reins. Men shouted at them to stop, and were met with laughter and rude words in a northern tongue.
“Wonderful,” Byorn exclaimed. “Which shitwit gave northerners the firewood cart?”
“Kumaryn,” Teriyan said darkly. Great Lord Kumaryn, that was. The great lord of the province of Valhanan. All the nobility were united in their hatred for the ex-heir of Tyree, who had refused to die, submit or be captured, and had converted to the ancient ways to escape the laws of Verenthanes. In Lenayin, most commonfolk agreed, the two faiths would get along fine if it weren’t for the arrogant, god-spouting superiority of the nobles.
The cart thundered past, leaving angry Valhanans pondering the prospect of another cold dinner. The hard men of Lenayin were in some ways a pampered lot, Jaryd reflected with a sigh. Food in Lenayin was good and plentiful, and bad seasons rare. Already the column ranks were filled with complaints from men accustomed to going their own way, providing for themselves, and unfamiliar with orders and discipline. Figure
Then he heard more hooves thundering and raised his head. Here along the column came a small figure on a galloping dussieh, skirts flying.
A great cheer rose from the ranks, following the Princess Sofy and her entourage down the line. Jaryd stared in disbelief, as his Baerlyn comrades stood and roared with the rest. What happened next was obscured from view, but after a time of impatient waiting, trying to see over the heads of the risen column, the firewood cart reappeared, this time with a Royal Guard escort. Princess Sofy and her Isfayen companion (handmaiden seemed an inappropriate term, for a daughter of bloodwarriors) rode ahead, grinning and waving to the men along the way. The men on the cart unloaded firewood to those who wanted it, with dark expressions. Some of Jaryd’s friends seemed to think it the funniest thing they’d seen in months, and had difficulty cheering through tears of laughter. Northern Verenthanes humiliated by a horse-riding girl. Again. Spirits be good.
As she came close, Jaryd fancied that the princess’s wave faltered a little, her eyes seeking someone in the crowd. She knew this was the Valhanan contingent, surely. And probably she knew that Baerlyn, being eastern Valhanan, marched in the middle of the last third of the Valhanan column. Jaryd’s heart began thumping, to see her come near. Then, somehow, her eyes met his despite the distance and commotion. And locked.
A pretty girl. “Beautiful,” perhaps, was a word best suited to the likes of her elder sister Alythia, of full breasts and ruby lips. The Princess Sofy had now nineteen summers, and was slim and delicate to behold…although not quite as much as in Jaryd’s memory. She wore a plain yet well-made dress over riding pants and boots, her long dark hair fell loose down her back, and her features were fine. Like a little girl, perhaps, all save for her eyes, which were large, dark and lovely. They fixed upon him now, wide and intent, her waving hand frozen in midair. Jaryd’s heart seemed to stop, and his knees weakened.
And then she was past, smiling and waving to other men in the column. Had she just been staring at him? Had it been his imagination? Or had she merely imagined she’d seen him, in the spot in the column where she’d been told he would be?
Teriyan slapped him on the arm, grinning broadly as he watched her go. “She’s got Sasha’s blood in her, for sure. She’s a good girl, that one.”
