“Good,” he said when at last Relam performed both patterns to satisfaction at a slow, but not unreasonable, speed. “Very good. Let’s take a break, get some water.”
Relam led the way up to where the water barrel stood, sheathing his sword as he went. As usual, he filled two mugs and passed the first to Oreius. The master drank deeply, draining half his mug, then took tiny sips.
“You’re doing well,” Oreius said grudgingly. “Very well. Far better than I expected.”
“Thanks,” Relam replied, smiling slightly.
“I only tell you this, because I get the sense that even though I give you high praise you won’t slack off on me,” Oreius continued. “With some students, the moment you tell them they’re doing well, they think they know everything.”
“I know I don’t know everything,” Relam snorted. “You could have beaten me any time you wanted this morning.”
“True,” Oreius agreed. “But I have years upon years of experience to draw on. You will too, someday.”
“But not yet.”
“No, not yet,” Oreius agreed.
They stood in silence for a moment, watching a ship passing on the river. Upstream, the middle section of Bridge Street was falling back into place, pedestrians and wagons waiting patiently to cross on both sides of the gap.
“I love this place,” Relam said finally, leaning against the rain barrel. “The garden, I mean.”
“There’s nowhere else quite like it,” Oreius agreed. “When I retired from the military and began looking for a place to live, I spent a lot of time looking. Nothing seemed quite right. I wasn’t used to mansions and palaces and manors. I was used to common barracks and, when I was an officer, a small, spare room. None of that prepared me for something like this.”
“What were those days like?” Relam asked. “The days when you were a soldier.”
Oreius’ expression darkened. “That was a long time ago, boy. It was a different age. An age of military strength and conquest, not an age of peace. When I was growing up, there were still many kingdoms at large. As I grew older, they fell one by one to the Sthan kings.”
“When I started out in the military,” Oreius continued, “I never imagined that I would end up here. I was a young soldier, eager to do battle for the kingdom, to push our borders across the known world. To crush resistance and annihilate enemies. My head was filled with images of glorious battles, driving the enemy before us, routing them completely.”
“When I was thirty-four, the Orell War began.” Oreius glanced at Relam. “They were the last of the free kingdoms that still stood. They caused us no trouble, other than the fact that they seldom allowed us to trade within their borders and the fact that they were the only part of the world that did not pay tribute to the Sthan King. Your grandfather called me up to the palace and asked me to launch a campaign against them. I was a promising young officer at the time, and a veteran of several minor skirmishes. I had also had dealings with the horse lords in the past, so I knew their ways.”
“I left the palace with a plan to take over the southern lands and the means to do it,” the old warrior went on, gazing down towards the river. “We mustered our armies, thousands of archers, pikemen, and cavalry, and marched. Our forces were split in three. One arm went east around the Furnier sea and down the river, entering the Renlor Basin by way of the city of Ostgard. Another force went west around the sea, entering the basin north of Narne. I took the leading force and commanded it personally, sailing across the sea and riding down between the two ranges of hills on which the East and West Bank fortresses now stand.”
“The Orell were not prepared for a war,” Oreius continued quietly. “But they resisted. They have an extremely strong code of honor. They would rather die than surrender, and die they did. They burned their own homes and villages as they fled south, those who survived the initial battles anyways. We drove them before us recklessly, herding them south through the Fells, past Ishkabur, all the way to the southern end of the peninsula.”
Relam stood quietly. He had heard this story before, but he dared not interrupt. Oreius was still looking off into the distance, at another age, at another scene, the river and the western part of Etares hidden to him.
“I tried to put a stop to it,” he whispered. “By then I had seen how terrible war truly was, witnessed the chaos of a real battle. Seen a world on fire, black smoke blotting out the sun and turning the day to night. We drew our forces up short of the end of the peninsula and set up camp. I sent a messenger back to Etares, hoping that the king would relent and allow us to withdraw, to offer the Orell protection under the Sthan Kingdom. They wouldn’t surrender, but maybe they would join us. I had to hope that was possible.”
“But before the messenger returned, the Orell ended it once and for all. Their remaining warriors mounted up and rode straight into the frozen sea, without a backward look. I had never seen anything like it. And in that moment, I realized what we had done. What I had done, in the name of my kingdom.” The sword master’s voice was low and hoarse. “We slaughtered an entire race, for a bit of land when we had the world. They are all gone, every last one. Their way of life, their people, even their villages and cities. Nothing remains. We
