Shaman's Crossing (33 page)

I didn’t sleep well. I doubt that any of us did. I bounced from one vivid, incomprehensible dream to the next. All were disturbing. In one, I was a woman, wandering the Academy grounds by night and crying out, “But where are the trees? What has become of the ancient forest of the west? Is all wisdom lost to these people and that is why they have gone mad? What can be done for such a folk? What can stand against their madness if they have done this to their own forest?”

I woke myself tossing restlessly in my bed, and then lay there with that question wedged in my mind. It made no sense to me, but some part of me urgently desired an answer. Why was the city better than the forest that had once stood there? That was what I wanted to know, and yet the question itself made no sense to me.

I sank back into sleep as if I were sinking into a tar hole. I dreamed I walked on the logged-off hill above the river, and that a presence walked at my side. Every time I tried to turn and look at him, he was always just a few steps behind me, always at the corner of my vision. I glimpsed his shadow on the ground. His shoulders were wide, and above his head I saw the shadows of antlers. We walked up the burned and scarred hillside. Everywhere men in rough work clothes plied their axes and saws, oblivious of our passing. They shouted genially to one another, and sweated as they hacked and chopped all through the chill day. When a horn sounded, they all hiked down the hill to a noon meal of soup and bread. Finally I turned to my companion and answered his unspoken question.

“You will find no answer here. They don’t know why they do it. They are told to do this by others who give them money for their work. They have never lived here or hunted here. They only came here to do this task. And when it is done, they will leave and not look back. It never belonged to them, and so what they destroy is no loss to them.”

I saw the shadow of the antlered head nod slowly. He did not speak, but I heard a woman’s voice say heavily, “As they do here, so will they do in every place that they go. It is worse than I feared. You see that I am right. We must turn them back.”

And again I woke, sweating as if I had just broken a fever. Bleakness settled over me as I recalled the pale stumps like broken teeth, and the old scar on the top of my head pounded. I felt sick with someone else’s sorrow. It was a moment before I could find my own foreboding over the melee on the parade ground. My own concerns seemed foreign and petty. When I tried to refocus my mind on them, I drifted into a restless sleep.

I stood before a tribunal, at attention, in my uniform. I was not allowed to speak. Light from a high window fell on me, right into my eyes, dazzling me. The rest of the room was in shadow. I felt cold stone under my feet. I could do nothing save stand in cold dread while voices from above discussed my fate. The voices echoed so much that I could not distinguish the words, but I knew they judged me. A cold fear filled me.

Suddenly a voice came clear. “Soldier’s boy.”

The voice had sounded feminine. I was confused. “Yes, ma’am.”

The voice was gravid with solemnity. “Soldier’s boy. It was given to you to turn them back. Did you?”

I lifted my eyes to my judges and tried to pierce the dimness. I could see nothing of them. “I got caught up in the moment, sir. When they called us, I ran out with the others and joined in the fight. I am sorry, sir. I failed to think for myself. I showed no leadership.” A deep shame flooded me.

As I stood there, desperately trying to defend my actions, I heard a drum beating in the distance. I turned my head to see where it was coming from and fell, to awaken on the cold floorboards of my room. The morning assembly drum was sounding. I got up off the floor, feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all. Every bruise on my body ached, a grim reminder of my foolishness the day before.

My head was still filled with foreboding from my dream. The others were rising from their beds as slowly as I was. Uncertainty filled me. Were we still confined to barracks? My stomach betrayed me with a loud rumble. Disgraced or not, I was hungry. I dressed and shaved despite the swollen places on my face. Spink finally voiced our question aloud. “Do you think we just go down to breakfast like nothing happened, or wait up here until we’re called?”

We had not long to wait for an answer. A rumpled-looking Corporal Dent came pounding up the stairs to demand that we immediately assemble in the square. It was earlier than usual, but we managed to be mostly presentable, even Jared and Trent. Trent had to button his coat around his splint, and Jared still seemed half dazed, but we worked together to get our entire patrol out onto the parade ground.

It was a chill dark morning. We stood in the predawn blackness and waited. We heard the horn sound and still we stood in our ranks. I was cold, hungry, and, above all else, frightened. When Colonel Stiet finally appeared, I did not know whether to be relieved or even more frightened. For an hour or more, he lashed us with a lecture on the traditions of the cavalla, the honor of the Academy, and the responsibility of each soldier to uphold the honor of his regiment and how badly all of us had failed. He promised again that there would be serious repercussions for our riot yesterday, and that the ringleaders responsible for it would be leaving the Academy forever in shame. When he finally dismissed us, all hope and appetite were dead in me.

We marched soddenly to our breakfast and filed into an uncharacteristically quiet mess. We served ourselves a breakfast that was typical of every breakfast we had eaten at the Academy. It seemed more tasteless than usual, and despite my night’s fast, I had quickly had enough. We spoke little at the table, but exchanged many sidelong glances. Which ones of us would be judged “ringleaders” and dismissed?

When we returned to our dormitory to gather our morning texts, we had the answer. Three trunks, already packed, waited in our study room. Mine was not among them, and the relief I felt shamed me. Jared stared at his dully; I think they had overdosed him with the sedative, and he could not quite comprehend the full depth of his misfortune. Trent went over and sat down on his and buried his face silently in his hands. Lofert, a gangly dim lad who seldom spoke, did now. “It’s not fair,” he said hopelessly. He looked round at all of us for confirmation. “It’s not fair!” he said more loudly. “What did I do that was any more than any of you did? Why me?”

We had no answer. Rory looked stricken, and I think we all secretly wondered why he had not been sent packing. Corporal Dent came up the stairs angrily to roust us out. He callously told Jared, Trent, and Lofert that they’d be moved to a rooming house in the city. Messages had already been sent to their fathers detailing their disgrace. It felt horrible for the nine of us to form up where there had been twelve just yesterday. Dent marched us double-time to our first class and left us at the door. Trist spoke quietly as we entered the classroom. “Well. That was our first culling, I suppose.”

“Yah,” Rory agreed stoically. “And all I can say is, damn glad it wasn’t me.”

I felt the same, and it shamed me.

L
ife at the Academy went on. Our routine closed up around us like a healing wound, and after a time the empty bunks in our quarters and our smaller formation when we marched did not seem so foreign. Outwardly, little changed, but inwardly, all my feelings about the Academy and even the cavalla had subtly altered. Nothing seemed certain; no future could be taken for granted, no honor or fellowship assumed. In the space of a day I had seen three boys have all their dreams dashed. I now had to believe that it could just as easily befall me.

If that culling had been intended to build a fire in my belly, it succeeded. With single-minded concentration, I poured myself into my academics. I pushed homesickness aside. I even buried my outrage at how the old nobles’ sons were treated in comparison to us. We soon learned that none of them had been sent home in disgrace. On even flimsier excuses, four of the first-years from Skeltzin Hall had been culled. The first-years from Bringham House received demerits to march off, as did a number of the second-years. Our own Corporal Dent had dark circles under his eyes for a month, for he had to rise an hour early each day to discharge his punishment. But that was the worst that befell any of them. And in time I came to believe, as Rory heavily observed one evening, “We were set up for that culling. We were chumps, friends. Chumps.”

The strange part was that once the culling faded in our minds, I truly began to enjoy my days at the Academy. Life was both busy and demanding, and yet uncomplicated. All elements of my day were predetermined; I rose when told to do so, marched to my classes, did my work, ate what was put before me, and slept when the lights were extinguished. As my father had foretold, my friendships deepened. I still felt a divide between Spink and Trist. I liked them both, Spink for his ethics and earnestness and Trist for his elegance and sophistication. If I could have, I would have been friends with both of them, yet neither seemed inclined to allow that to happen.

I think the differences between the two showed most in how they treated Young Caulder (as we all came to call him), for the commander’s son became very much a part of our lives. I recall the first time the boy showed up in our common room, uninvited and unannounced. It was at the end of our second month in the Academy, and on that Sevday evening our proctor had left our study room early to take himself off to an evening in town. It was the first time we had been left unsupervised for a full evening and a welcome respite from the grindstone. Ostensibly we were applying ourselves to our lessons to be ready when classes resumed on the morrow. Certainly Spink was, with faithful Gord at his elbow as he labored through page upon page of math drills, for that remained his most challenging class. I had finished my written work but had my Varnian grammar book open before me, going over some irregular verb forms. As my father had intended, I was ahead of the column in most of my classes and fully resolved to retain that lead.

The other residents of our floor sat at the tables or sprawled before the empty hearth, books and papers scattered on the study tables or on the rug. The quiet buzz of desultory conversation filled the room. All our previous inclination to horseplay had been worn away by the long day of classes and drill we had endured.

Rory, who seemed to have an endless supply of bawdy tales and ribald jokes, was lounging at the table and in the midst of recounting a long tale about a whore with a glass eye. Caleb was in his corner with his latest penny dreadful, reading aloud to Nate and Oron about an ax murderer who preyed on loose women, when a young and disapproving voice loudly exclaimed, “I thought you were all supposed to be studying here tonight. Where is your proctor?”

Rory stopped in the midst of his tale, his mouth agape, and we all turned our attention to the lad who stood in the doorway looking in at us. If it had not been for the tenor of his voice, I might have mistaken his utterance for the disapproval of a senior officer, so confident did he sound of his right to rebuke us. There was a moment of silence in which all of us exchanged glances. If anyone else had been there to witness it, they might have thought it comical to see a room full of physically prime young men fall to a hush at a rebuke from a mere boy. But I am sure the thought flashed through everyone’s mind: is he here on his own, or at his father’s behest?

Nate found his tongue first. “Our proctor isn’t here at the moment. Have you a message for him?”

It was a guarded response, and I knew immediately that Nate was putting himself on the line for our study proctor. Was it possible that he was not supposed to have left us that evening? I admired his courage and loyalty even as I doubted his wisdom.

Caulder advanced into the room like a rat that has discovered the cat is away. “Oh, aye, I’ve a message for him. Someone should tell him that he’ll get the dick-scald if he doesn’t stay away from Garter Anne’s girls.”

Rory gave a great “hah!” of laughter at this unexpected pronouncement and the rest of us joined in. Garter Anne’s was a cheap brothel at the edge of town closest to the Academy. We had all been sternly warned away from it and like establishments in the first Sixday service we had attended, and heard tales of Anne’s wild girls from every upperclassman every day since then. Caulder stood grinning, a bit pink on the cheeks, well pleased with the effect he had wrought. Later I would come to know that this was a pattern with the lad. He would first fling about his father’s authority, to see who was impressed, and if that did not bring him welcome, he’d next sink down to some crude jest to see whose interest that would win. Had I been older, I would have recognized it as a boy’s floundering attempt to win approval and acceptance with any coin he could muster. At the time, caught off guard, I laughed along with the rest of them, even as I was appalled at Caulder’s words. In my home, at his age, they would have earned me a severe whipping from my father or tutor. Here, having earned his entry into our company, Caulder advanced into the room.

“Well, I can see you’re all hard at work here!” he said, his tone conveying exactly the opposite. Eyes bright, he wandered through the room as if he had a right to be there. Most of the cadets watched him advance curiously. Kort put a blank sheet of paper over the letter he had been composing. Caleb opened a book to conceal his pamphlet. Across from me, Spink’s pencil continued to scratch its way through another set of exercises. As if drawn to him by this very lack of attention, Caulder stopped at Spink’s elbow and rudely peered over his shoulder at his work.

“Eight times six is forty-eight, not forty-six! Even I know that!” He stabbed at Spink’s error. Spink’s lifted arm casually blocked him. Without even looking up from his work, Spink asked, “And do you know that this is the study room for Carneston House first-years, not a playroom for little boys?”

The mocking smile melted from Caulder’s face. “I’m not a little boy!” he declared angrily. “I’m eleven years old and the first son of the commander of this institution. You don’t seem to realize that my father is Colonel Stiet!”

Spink lifted his gaze from the page before him and looked at the boy flatly. “My father was Lord Kellon Spinrek Kester. Before that, however, he was Captain Kellon Spinrek Kester. I am his soldier son. As your father was a soldier son, and not a lord, all his sons are soldier sons. That would make us peers and equals,
if
you were old enough to be a cadet here. And if, as the son of a soldier and not the son of a noble, you were guaranteed entry to the Academy.”

“I…I am a first son, even if I will be a soldier. And I will go to the Academy: when my father took over this post, he asked that of the Lords Council and they granted it. My father has promised to buy me a good commission! And you…you are just…just a second son of a second son, an upstart battle lord’s son, jumped up to the status of a noble’s son! That’s all you are!” Caulder had lost not only all his charm but also his veneer of maturity. His name-calling unmasked him as the child he was, even as his rash reply revealed what he truly thought of all of us. The words were scarcely out of his mouth before he realized what he had done. He looked around at all of us and seemed torn between attempting to mend fences and defiantly putting us all in our places. He drew breath to speak.

Trist saved him. He had been reading a book, his chair tipped back to lean against the wall by the hearth, when the boy came in. Now he tipped it forward so that the front legs landed with a thud on the floor. “I’m going out for a chew,” he announced to no one in particular. Caulder looked at him in puzzlement. At first I thought Trist was announcing it aloud just to irritate Spink further. Trist had recently discovered that although the smoking of tobacco in “paper, pipes, water tubes, or containers of any sort” was expressly forbidden by Academy rules, the chewing of it was ignored. Some said it had been forgotten when the rules were drawn up; others said it was well known that the chewing of tobacco could stave off certain diseases that bred in close quarters, and thus it was tolerated, although spittoons were forbidden in our rooms. For whatever reason, Trist interpreted that whatever was not specifically forbidden was allowed, and openly indulged in the habit. It annoyed Spink, who regarded it as a churlish sidestep of gentlemanly behavior. He had grown up in an area where tobacco was not commonly used, and seemed to find any use of it disgusting. As predictably as the sun rising, Spink observed, “A filthy habit.”

“Undeniably,” Trist agreed affably. “Most manly pleasures are.” He won a general laugh for that, and then I perceived his true target as he turned his inclusive grin on Caulder. “As befits an indulgence of ‘battle lord upstarts.’ Don’t you think, Caulder Stiet? Or have you never been exposed to tobacco chewing?” Before the boy could reply, Trist answered himself, “No, doubtless you are too wellborn to have ever even heard of the simple pleasures a cavalla man may carry in his own pocket. A bit too rough for a gently reared lad like yourself.” Casually, Trist took a plug of tobacco from his pocket. He peeled back the bright wrapper and then the waxed paper to reveal the dark brown brick of dried leaf. Even from where I sat, I could smell the harsh tobacco. It was cheap, rough snoose, something a sheep farmer might chew.

Caulder looked from the plug to Trist’s smiling face and back again. I could almost feel the charismatic pull myself. He didn’t want to be seen as ignorant, nor as “too genteel” to enjoy the manly pleasures of a cavalla man. Too genteel was only one step away from being a sissy. I didn’t envy him his dilemma. If I had been a boy burning to distinguish myself in front of a roomful of manly young cadets, I’d probably have taken the bait also.

“Seen it before,” he said disdainfully.

“Have you?” Trist’s reply was lazy, and he let it hang a moment before he asked, “Ever tasted it?”

The boy said nothing, but only stared at him.

“A demonstration,” Trist offered affably. “Like so, lad.” He made a show of breaking a corner off the plug. “Now, it doesn’t go into your mouth on your tongue. Rather, it tucks into the lower lip. Like this.” Snugged into place, the plug barely showed as a lump in Trist’s lip. He nodded his head sagely. “A man’s pleasure. Rory?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Rory replied enthusiastically. I had known that he chewed, also that he had been too short of coin to bribe a second-year to buy him snoose in town. He stepped forward to receive the offered plug, broke off a share, and tucked it into his lip. “Aw, that’s the stuff!” he exclaimed when he had it in place.

“Caulder?” Trist asked, extending the bar of pressed tobacco.

All eyes were on him. Except for Spink’s, of course. His pencil had not paused in its scratching. His diligence was a rebuke to the rest of us, but even Gord seemed transfixed by Trist’s seduction of the boy. Trist was so golden, so relaxed as he leaned an elbow on the mantel of the fireplace. He was one of those rare men on whom a uniform looks unique. Every one of us in the room was dressed in the same green jacket and trousers and white shirt, but Trist looked as if he had chosen the garb rather than donned it by default. His shoulders were wide, his waist trim, and his gleaming black boots hugged the calves of his long legs. Our severe haircuts made most of us look like shorn sheep, or, as Rory had aptly put it, “bald as scalded pigs.” But Trist’s dense blond curls hugged his skull in a golden cap rather than, as my own hair did, stand up in a forest of coarse bristle. If ever a young man exemplified a cavalla cadet, it was Trist. How could any lad who longed to distinguish himself turn away from such an offer of camaraderie?

Caulder couldn’t. A hushed silence held as the boy advanced, saying with bravado, “I don’t mind saying that I’ll try it.”

“There’s a lad!” Trist exclaimed with approval. He broke off an overly generous chunk of the harsh stuff and handed it to the boy. Caulder tucked the whole wad into his lower lip and then tried to smile bravely around the bullfrog bulge of it.

“Well, let’s go outside for a stroll about before curfew shuts us in, shall we?” Trist invited him and Rory. Caulder was already turning pinkish about his eyes as they walked out of the room. Rory and Trist, well experienced in the way of chew, were chatting about the day as their boots clattered down the stairs. For a time the silence held in the room. Then Oron and a couple of other cadets were suddenly inspired to rise and tiptoe down the stairs after the trio, barely managing to contain their mirth as they went.

“Bet he don’t even make it to the second landing,” Nate said quietly. Kort lifted one dark eyebrow skeptically, then drifted across the room and moved silently to where he could watch the descent.

Someone chuckled, and then silence filled the room again. We listened to the regular cadence of boots descending the stairs. Then suddenly we heard a desperate rush of footsteps down the stairs. A truly impressive bellow of retching reached our ears, echoed almost instantly by Sergeant Rufet’s roar of outrage, and drowned in the hoots of laughter and cruel applause of Caulder’s audience. Kort reappeared and announced solemnly. “Vomited down two flights of stairs. I’ve never seen one plug of tobacco go quite so far.” We all burst out laughing. Spink lifted his eyes from his books and slowly shook his head at us. “Picking on a lad,” he shamed us solemnly.