His Own Good Sword (The Cymeriad #1) (22 page)

XII

It didn’t end in that moment, of course.

Almost immediately he was caught up into the rush again, jostled away
from the steps, and he had to clear the numbness from his mind, force
himself to think, to react. But that was the breaking point, the
beginning of the end. Aino had held his line steady all this time,
had kept the Cesini pinned tightly against the gate-wall despite
their greater numbers. Now his men were starting to overpower them,
turn them slowly back. For a while there was hot, desperate fighting
directly under the gate-house, and then the Cesini were being pushed
out onto the fort road again, and someone—his own man or a
rebel, Tyren didn’t know—was shouting Mægo’s
death above the battle roar.

After that it ended quickly. Mægo was dead, the yard wouldn’t
be taken. There was no sign of Ryn Magryn. Tyren hadn’t seen
him since Mægo had ordered him away from the gate-house steps.
A few Cesini continued to fight, selling their lives dearly and
pointlessly before the gate, but most of them broke and ran,
scattering all over the northern hillside and up into the black-pine
forest above the valley.

By noontime it was over, and there was a dazed, exhausted stillness
hanging over the yard and the gate-wall and the fort road beyond.

For a long while he was too busy to think, and he was thankful for
that. He was light-headed, unsteady on his feet from the blood loss.
He could hardly put weight on his left leg. He limped to his quarters
and wrapped up the knee himself, to spare the surgeon the time and
effort needed more urgently for other men. When that was done he went
into his office and cut a length of papyrus scroll and penned a hasty
report of the battle and a fresh request for reinforcements. He went
back out into the yard and found a man sound enough to make the ride
to Rien. Then he went to the infirmary and moved slowly and stiffly
among the rows of his wounded, kneeling to say words of commendation
to them, smiling when they congratulated him on his victory.

He rested on the infirmary portico afterward. A heavy pain had
started in the knee and he stood with his weight thrown on his right
leg, his head leaning back against the wall, his eyes closed,
listening to the activity all round him: the surgeon barking orders
at his helpers, the blows of a hammer falling over by the gate.
Quieter and more comfortable in his quarters, but the pain and the
noise kept him from having to think.

He heard Aino coming and spoke without opening his eyes. “How
many dead?”

“Thirteen dead, sir,” said Aino.

“Eighteen total, then.”

“Twenty, sir. Our messengers to Rien.”

“You have the list?”

“Yes, sir.”

He took the tablet from Aino and ran his eyes over it without really
seeing it.

Aino said, after a moment, “Sir, what are your orders
concerning the rebel wounded?”

He looked up. “How many of their wounded?”

“I counted twenty-eight total, sir. We’ve housed them in
the barracks for now. There isn’t room left in the infirmary.”

He didn’t say anything for a while. The knee was hurting
fiercely now and the pain was making his head spin, hot blood pound
behind his temples. He could hear Mægo’s voice over the
din. Anything for duty, Risto. Shouldn’t have expected
otherwise of you.

He shook his head, once, tightly. “No need to waste the
surgeon’s time, Lieutenant. I intend to execute them.”

Aino said, “Yes, sir.”

“Pick out a detail and have it done. Then put the bodies
together with the rest of their dead on the common. Burn them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant,” said Tyren.

“Yes, sir?”

His thoughts overwhelmed him as he tried to speak—words and
sounds and images and feelings flooding his head, drowning whatever
he’d intended to say. The way Maryna Nyre had smiled at him
that day in the infirmary. (Only yesterday. It seemed longer, seemed
a lifetime.) The way it had made his heart jump, his breath catch in
his throat. How he wished he might see her smile again. But that had
been only a moment, and the moment was gone, and there was the wall
back up between them. No, there was far more than a wall between them
now. There was Verio’s death, and Mægo Sarre’s
death, and this war, and duty, above everything else. Anything for
duty.

He was silent so long that Aino prompted him, quietly.

“Commander Risto,” he said.

He pulled himself back, with effort. There was an ache in his heart.

“Afterward,” he said. “Afterward, Lieutenant, I
want you to go to the Nyre farm. I want you to find the girl and
bring her to me. Only the girl, do you understand? Do it alone.”

Aino’s eyes searched briefly over Tyren’s face. His own
face was blank. “I understand, sir,” he said.

He didn’t watch the executions. He went to his office instead
and sat there with the muster list and the list of his dead spread
out on the desk before him and he took comfort, for a while, in the
mindless routine of the letter-writing. The words came easily,
detachedly. Meaningless marks on the papyrus: your son died doing his
duty for the Empire, died for the glory of the Empire. Was hacked
into pieces in the mud for the glory of the Empire.

A knock on the office door interrupted him, at length. He expected it
was Aino returned from the Nyre farm and an icy coldness shot through
him and the ache in his heart sharpened all at once, so keenly he
shuddered. He didn’t look up from the writing, though his
fingers were so stiff and numb now the quill was useless in them.

“Enter,” he said. His voice sounded raspy to his ears.

But it wasn’t Aino. It was a regular whose name he didn’t
know. The man saluted him. “Commander Risto,” he said.

It took effort not to let his relief show. He swallowed, closing his
eyes briefly. Then he lifted his head and nodded to acknowledge the
salute. “What is it, soldier?”

“Sir, we were gathering the rebel dead on the common, as you
ordered.”

“Yes?”

“There are men from the Magryn household guard among their
dead, sir.”

It took a moment for the full meaning of that to sink in. “They
fought for Sarre?”

“I don’t think they were in the fighting, sir. They were
unarmed. Executed, by the look of it. We found them with their hands
bound.”

He was already standing, gripping the desk with one hand to keep the
weight from his left leg. “Show me,” he said.

They brought out Risun for him and he followed on horseback while the
regular led him on foot, out through the gate and up the fort road to
the common. The rebel dead were being piled with their gear at the
center of common, under the marble column. There was a body hung on
the column. It was hung as Magryn’s body had been hung, but by
one wrist only, and Tyren knew, even before he was close enough to
make out the pale high-cheekboned face or any detail of the
blood-soaked tunic, it was Mægo’s body. His heart went
tight and cold. He stiffened. Risun sensed it and tossed his head and
the reins nearly slipped from Tyren’s hands before he could
force his frozen muscles to move again.

“Who ordered that?”

He said it harshly and the regular glanced up to him, startled.
“Sir?”

“Who ordered the body displayed?”

The regular seemed puzzled. “I don’t know, sir.”

He was fighting the urge to be sick. His throat was thick with bile,
his mouth dry. He very nearly leaned over in the saddle to retch on
the ground. He kept himself from it, his right hand tight upon
Risun’s neck for support, swallowing to steady himself.

The regular, watching him, said, “Do you wish it removed, sir?”

He swallowed again and turned his face away from the column. “Show
me the Magryn dead,” he said.

There were eight men in the harness of the Magryn household guard
among the piled rebel dead. He dismounted and went walking among
them, crouching down on his heels once or twice to look at the bodies
more closely. There wasn’t much point to it. All eight had died
in the same way, their hands bound at their backs, their throats
slit. He might have told as much from the saddle.

He stood. He went back over to Risun and took the reins and mounted
up again.

“You and five others,” he said to the regular. “Come
with me.”

This time he led. He took the troop across the common and over the
water channel to the hall of the Magryni. The gate doors stood open,
unguarded. The ivy-choked yard lay still and dark and silent. The
house, too; there was no smoke rising from the opening cut in the
thatched roof of the great room, no light flickering in the window
slits. He slid down from Risun’s saddle at the center of the
yard. There were five fresh graves dug in the black earth a little
way from the house, west and south across the yard, alongside a sixth
grave he knew was Magryn’s. He went over to them, leading Risun
by the reins. He gave orders, over his shoulder, for the men to
search the house. There was no need for it. The house was empty and
he’d seen everything he needed to see. But he wanted to be
alone. He stood looking down at the graves, his weight on his sound
leg, leaning against Risun’s shoulder for balance, while his
thoughts sorted themselves out. Four of the graves he could account
for: the woman’s grave, the two younger boys,’ the
girl’s. He wasn’t sure of the fifth. A lone loyal
servant, perhaps. Then again the guardsmen had most likely thought
they were the loyal ones even as they’d spilled the woman’s
blood. Surely it was loyalty to Ryn Magryn, their true lord, that had
driven them to rid the hall of the woman and the rival heir she’d
have raised up as lord in Ryn’s stead. They’d have
expected reward and favor for it, perhaps. Instead Mægo had
given them justice.

He posted two men of the six to guard duty out in the yard. The
others he set to work gathering together the hall’s valuables:
the coffers of coin from the great room, the gear and weapons from
the guardsmen’s armory. When he’d taken stock of all of
it, and given orders for its transport, he rode back alone to the
fort. He took care this time to keep his eyes from the column.

* * *

Aino was waiting in his office by the time he got back.

“The Nyri have fled, sir,” he said.

“Fled?”

“The farm was abandoned, sir. The tracks I found led towards
the mountains. I’ll take a troop in pursuit, if you wish.”

He sat down again in the chair behind the desk and ran his eyes over
the letter he’d left lying there unfinished. He picked up the
quill and inked the tip afresh and started writing where he’d
left off. When he was done he signed the letter and sealed it and
laid it aside to dry. He started on another. He did it deliberately,
forcing his mind to it, sounding out each word in his head as he
wrote so his thoughts didn’t have the chance to wander.

“No,” he said. “No, there’s work enough to be
done here, for now. You can go, Lieutenant.”

Aino made no immediate move. “Let me finish the letters, sir,
while you take some rest.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

Aino’s eyes went briefly to the half-written letter before him,
and he realized his hand, holding the quill, was shaking. He put the
quill down and moved the hand to his lap.

“You can go,” he said again.

“Yes, sir,” said Aino.

He went into his quarters, once Aino’s footsteps had faded to
silence, and he lay on his back on the bed, the thumb and forefinger
of his right hand pressed against his eyelids, his left arm outflung
across the pallet, and he waited for the shaking to leave him. He
slept, unexpectedly. He woke with a start, at the fourth hour, to the
booted tread of the guard changing out on the wall, the soft patter
of rain on the roof tiles. His head ached, and the soreness had
spread from the knee and gone all over, had sunk deep into his bones.
He lay there a while looking up at the shadows moving on the ceiling.
He knew he wouldn’t sleep again. He got up and went back into
the office and worked on the letters by lamp-light.

* * *

In the morning he stood in the fine gray drizzle to watch the burials
of his own dead behind the fort, bracing himself against the rear
wall to keep the weight off his left leg. Afterward he instructed
Aino to bring him a list of the repairs to be done, and he went
hobbling to his office again, and took out the log book, and sat down
at the desk to write his full report of the battle.

Aino was back sooner than he’d expected, standing before the
desk and saluting. “Sir, there’s a Cesino asking to speak
with you.”

“A Cesino?”

“Yes, sir. A man named Muryn. He says he’s known to you.”

He froze inside. He looked up to Aino with the log book still
unopened in his hands. He didn’t say anything for a moment, his
thoughts running too quickly. “He’s here in the fort?”

“I had him wait at the gate, sir.”

“What does he want?”

“He wishes to speak with you alone, sir. That’s all he’ll
tell me.”

“Bring him, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

He put down the log book on the desk and sat there with his elbows
propped up, his hands clenched together under his chin. There was a
painful tightness in his chest. No place or time for words now.
Surely Muryn knew that. Muryn had known that from the beginning, if
he’d been too foolish to know it himself. No reason for either
of them to keep up the pretense now.

He tried to show nothing in his face while Aino brought the priest
into the office and saluted again and stepped aside. Muryn stood
before the desk with his arms folded against his ribs, his shoulders
straight, his gaze steady on Tyren. Except for the gray pallor of
exhaustion over his skin, the slightest hint of strain round his
eyes, he seemed remarkably calm.

“Leave us, Lieutenant,” Tyren said to Aino.

When Aino had gone he said, “Foolish of you to come here,
Muryn.”