Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) (30 page)

“He’s not—”

“Besides,” said Maok. “I have your answer from the council.”

“About keeping the prisoners? What do they say?” His voice had risen, and Maok clucked her tongue disapprovingly.

“We will talk away from here. Come.”

Before Jiaan could apologize or protest, she led him down a trail beside the stream to a stony bend some distance from the sleeping camp. The old woman found a flat rock in the dense shade of the canyon wall and seated herself, pulling back the hood to expose her wrinkled face and flyaway milkweed hair.

“Can you take this much exposure to the sun?” Jiaan asked, slipping gratefully into the Faran she had spoken all along. “Even in the shade?”

“In the shade, yes,” said Maok. “For a time. It is so harsh, this light.” She gestured to the sun-drenched rocks on the other side of the stream. “No softness. No place to hide.”

Jiaan knew he should let her take the conversation where she wished, since she probably would anyway—but he needed to know. “Can you hold our prisoners for us for the next four or five months?”

Maok sighed. “A sunlight question, so I will give you a sunlight
answer. No, not for even four months. They eat too much for us to feed them if they do not hunt, and if we give them weapons to hunt …” She shrugged. “Soon they are not prisoners.”

Jiaan’s heart sank. He had hoped not to have to deal with keeping those men himself. It would take men away from his forces, men he might need desperately. The next force Garren sent into the desert would be far larger, and in more of a hurry to win. Even with the Suud on his side …

“You have done good, very good, riding the tumbling of the world so far,” Maok said, interrupting his circling thoughts. “You have won a great victory, with few deaths even to your enemies. Do not lose your balance now. We can hold your prisoners for several weeks. Maybe two months, if you give us some food for them.”

“If we gave you enough to feed them, could you keep them the whole time?” Jiaan asked.

“Maybe,” said Maok. “We are separating them among our tribes, so they will always be much fewer than we are. If they try to escape, we will let them. As your friend found out, the desert is the best guard. So little trouble for us. But can you get food for all these men, for four months?”

He couldn’t. The villages that supported them were sending all the food they could spare, and Jiaan could barely feed his own army. If he had enough money, he could have had food shipped in from all over Farsala. But he hadn’t enough—not nearly
enough. The last of the exhilarated triumph of his victory vanished under a tide of responsibility. Who would have thought that victory would be even more complicated than the fight?
I hate command.

“Do not lose your balance now,” Maok repeated firmly. “It’s not often the Creator Spirit kicks the world this hard, and you’ve done good so far.”

“The Creator Spirit what? Oh!” The quaint myth she’d once told him surfaced in Jiaan’s mind. “Yes, I remember. Your god gets bored, and he kicks the world to shake things up.”

The blind-looking eyes studied him, soberly. “It has been kicked hard this time,” she said, ignoring his smile. “Change is always coming, but some are harder than others. There’s only one thing men can do when the world changes.”

Jiaan’s humor dropped away. “Survive it?” he asked bitterly.

“Not quite,” said Maok. “But you’re close. Change, world-kicking change, has come several times to the Suud. We remember those times, for it is not a thing that people forget.”

Jiaan had other concerns on his mind, but he knew better than to ignore anything Maok wanted to tell him. “Go on.”

“The first time even we do not remember well. It is said that we were once day dwellers. In the earliest of our stories the Suud lived in the land on the other side of the mountains, though—”

“The Suud lived in Farsala?” Jiaan knew he was interrupting,
but he was so startled he couldn’t help it. He’d never heard anything about this.

“I am telling you,” Maok said calmly. “But the land on the other side of the mountains was much different then. The marshes that now are only near the sea covered most of the land, and it was filled with great and terrible animals who killed our ancestors. But these animals were day dwellers too, so the wisest of our ancestors went into caves during the day, where they could defend themselves, and only went out at night when the animals slept. Long and long passed, and our skin grew pale, and our eyes came to see in the dark.

“Then the Creator Spirit kicked the world again, and it trembled and trembled for many years, and the land tipped, and the swamps drained into the sea, and it grew colder, so all the great animals died. But the Suud, in our caves, were warm and safe. With the swamp gone the grass grew, and the cliff that splits the land rose up, and it became as it looks today.”

Jiaan knew that she and other Suud had traveled in Farsala often enough. It shouldn’t have surprised him that she described it so well, but somehow it did.

“Why didn’t the Suud come out of their caves and become day dwellers again?” he asked. “Hunting is better in the day now, and the … the great animals are gone.”

He wasn’t certain he believed in the “great animals,” but it was her story.

“We might have done,” said Maok, “after long and long had passed. But before that, change came to us again. This time the Creator Spirit’s kick set the people of the world moving. Two groups of people, traveling together, came into the grasslands, fleeing from a common enemy on the other side of the great desert. One group had light hair and eyes; they tilled the soil and made houses. The other had herds of goats and horses, planted little, and lived in tents like the Suud do now. Their eyes were dark and their hair straight and black.”

Despite the inaccuracy of that—for the Farsalans had never fled before any enemies, but had always lived in Farsala and defended its borders—Jiaan recognized his own people. However, this story was obviously false.

“How could they have crossed the great desert?” he asked. “No one who’s explored it has ever found water, or any life at all out in the sand. No one even knows what lies beyond it. Unless … have your people crossed it?”

“No,” Maok admitted. “But maybe the outer desert was less harsh then, for cross it these two peoples did. They were not friends to each other, though they had chosen to flee together. The dark-haired people fought long and long before they brought the light-haired ones under their control. We knew this because we watched from our caves, and hoped that their quarrel would keep them from fighting us.”

“Wait—you’re saying that the deghans … conquered the peasants? That’s not true! They made a bargain—peasants to serve and farm; deghans to rule and fight!”

“Maybe they did reach this bargain in the end,” said Maok indifferently. “I do not know what let them cross the desert as allies, or why they fought later. All I know is that we asked only for the night, offering them the day, but they both turned as one to fight us. I think … the stories do not say this, but I think that turning against us was what finally brought them together.”

“But …” There were no Farsalan stories of deghans fighting peasants; there were no stories of crossing the desert. But the very heart of Farsalan legend began with the time when champions fought the demons who inhabited Farsala in those ancient days. Fought them until Rostam cast down their king and drove them out. Demons who had skin and hair as white as the face of the moon, who were creatures of the night and could not endure the light of Azura’s sun.

Demons who might, just might, have lived in Farsala before the Farsalans did?

“I don’t … I didn’t … I don’t know what to say,” said Jiaan. “I’m sorry.”

“You should not be,” Maok told him. “Not for a thing that happened so long before that only memory remains. Those old Suud rode the tumbling of the world, just as we try to now, and we came
into the desert, where our ability to see in the dark and live in the night helps us much. But do you see the point of all this change, Young Commander?”

“Um, no. Not really.”

The old woman was too subtle to roll her eyes or sigh in exasperation, but the exaggerated patience in her voice got the message across. “The point is that people cannot stop change, but they can shape it to be for good—or at least not so bad. Change is not a one thing complete—it brings choices. When your people came to the land on the other side of the mountains, my people could have chosen to fight to all their deaths. Some did fight and die. But the wisest of them retreated to the desert, and your people who followed could not beat us, and we have lived long in peace and happiness because of it. These wise ones did not fall down when the world tumbled—they thought about the change, rode the tumbling of the world, and made things better. Just like your sis—your people in Mazad are doing.”

Jiaan frowned. “What happened in Mazad?”

“You didn’t hear? The messenger was just … ah, he would have reached your camp after you left, for he spent the night with us. There have been several victories happening against the Hrum. The Hrum leader sent two centris to hunt some men in the swamp place called Dugaz, but the men they hunted killed almost all of them.”

Jiaan’s heart leaped—the swamp rats had been forced to fight! “Good for them!”

Maok eyed him skeptically. “Don’t sound so happy yet. The swamp men lost many of their own lives in this fight. The messenger said that one of them had told the Hrum where their camp was hidden. The swamp people sent this man to the Hrum, after the battle. In very small pieces.”

“He was a traitor,” said Jiaan.

If they hadn’t been at war with the Hrum, he would have approved of someone who betrayed bandits to the authorities. But they
were
at war. And now that he thought of it, Shir, the bandit chieftain, was another person who had the good sense to want the peddler dead—and that was enough in itself to win Jiaan’s approbation.

Maok sighed. “Well, if that news pleases you, this you will like even better. Your people in Mazad have made a great victory, bringing the storms in the sky to help them. They beat the Hrum army so bad that they will have to bring more men before they fight again.”

The relief that welled through Jiaan’s heart was so intense, tears came to his eyes. “Yes! Let the senate committee see that! But what do you mean, the storms helped them?”

Maok’s eyes glinted. “The messenger said that a big storm came up to the city and stopped right on it, and that it rained much harder
there than anywhere for far and far. He said that the people around the city saw the clouds stop in one spot, like a hand held them, and grow and grow. They say that Sorahb did it, and they whisper that he is a sorcerer and call him ‘storm-bringer.’ That is what the messenger said.”

Jiaan laughed. “It helps to be lucky, too. A good storm would have run off the city cobbles and made the ground outside the walls a sea of mud. That’s wonderful!”

“And so,” said Maok, “the people of Mazad rode the tumbling of the world until it rolled them a storm and gave them victory. What will you do with your prisoners, Commander Jiaan?”

I
T WAS ALMOST DUSK
when Jiaan returned to the Suud camp, tired and very hungry. But there was no point in returning earlier, for the Suud wouldn’t begin cooking until after they rose, at sunset. And before he ate, Jiaan had something to settle. He went to the hutch where Patrius was being tended and asked the hooded Suud who stood guard outside if the prisoner was awake.

Yes, the guard replied, his friend was awake and doing better, too.

Jiaan, who had already identified Patrius as his prisoner, sighed.

When he went into the hutch, he thought that the tactimian looked better—still tired, but at least his skin held more color than
that of the healer beside him. There were lines of pain around his eyes, but the grief and guilt that had marked his expression earlier had vanished under his usual cool control. Perhaps Jiaan could ease those emotions, or at least distract him.

“I’ve got an idea,” he said abruptly. “You say that neither Garren nor the committee is likely to reject Siatt’s offer. But once they’ve accepted, would they be willing to trade those Kadeshi peasants to me in exchange for more than five centris of Hrum prisoners?”

Patrius sat up abruptly, then clutched his head and swore. Jiaan winced in sympathy—he had become dehydrated on one of his early visits to the desert, and the resultant headache had been one of the worst he’d ever suffered.

“You’d trade us for the Kadeshi? Of course Garren will do it. A skilled soldier is worth more than four untrained men. Our training methods are good, but we couldn’t get far with them in the few months Garren has left. But neither will you, no matter how many peasants you’ve trained to fight.”

Yes, he would have learned where Jiaan’s army had come from. Jiaan wondered what else the Hrum officer had deduced, and how Garren might use it against them. For a moment his resolve wavered, but then it firmed. This was the right thing to do, and if Jiaan couldn’t figure out a way to make it work for him, then maybe he should step aside and let someone else command.

“The Suud can’t feed you,” said Jiaan, “not for four months anyway. Neither can I, so letting you go is no hardship.”

“But there will be more of the Kadeshi than of us,” Patrius protested. “Probably a lot more.”

“Yes, but they could hunt and … never mind. I’m not worried about that part of it.” Actually he was, but his nascent plan to mix the Kadeshi conscripts with his troops, scatter them throughout the countryside, and have them all attack the Hrum as Garren’s time limit drew near was still largely unformed. Even if it had been honed to a fine edge, he wouldn’t have shared it with a Hrum officer.

“The point is that if they’re fighting for us, Siatt probably won’t kill their families,” Jiaan went on. “Why should he? The men will still be fighting the Hrum, which was what he wanted, more or less. They won’t have had any choice in the matter, so killing their families would be a waste of good labor. If he blames anyone, it will probably be me—which I’d consider an honor. And instead of five hundred plus prisoners who have to be fed and guarded, I’ll have a huge number of men who, no matter how ill-trained, will fight on my side.”