Spirit of the Sword: Pride and Fury (The First Sword Chronicles Book 1) (48 page)

Yet, the weather aside, he was afraid Deucalia would prove a less pleasant place than Corona had been. The Coronim people had at least been welcoming and hospitable, until the Crimson Rose had caught them of course, and any time his sorcery had been discovered the discovery had prompted no outcry, only some people asking him for magical favours which he had done his best to grant. But here, where the Novar Church held sway, he was prepared for a frostier welcome. If any Novarian witchhunters encountered them, Jason did not like to consider the consequences.

Actually, when he did consider them he found the consequences were likely to be a few dead witchhunters, but he did not wish to call the wrath of the church down upon the heads of Tullia, Michael or Amy. He would not hesitate to call them his friends, for they had earned nothing less. Even the fire drake seemed affable, though Jason did not know him well. It was only Gideon, the cold eyed Butcher of Oretar, who still commanded his trepidation. There was something off about the man, something hidden that he did not wish to be revealed.

Apart from anything else, there was the business with his brother's murder and Gideon's exile. Gideon said that he had been framed by Lord Quirian, but Jason had never heard anything to suggest such a plot. One might say that it wouldn't be much of a job if people did not believe Gideon's guilt, but Gideon had not offered one shred of evidence to support his statement, nor did he appear willing to do so. It was, to say the least, suspicious, and Jason felt uneasy that Michael and Amy seemed prepared to take his innocence on faith.

If he is false, we will protect them, Tullia and I.
It was the least that they could do.

"I've been wondering about something," Amy said, interrupting Jason's thoughts. "Why is all the land so bare?"

"What do you mean, our Amy?" Michael said.

"You know, it's empty," Amy said. "Under the sea there's always something going on: fish, crabs, sharks, squid, whales, always something swimming by. It's not always something you want swimming by, but it's there even if you have to chase it off. But here, there's just people and a few birds. No animals that don't live on a farm, nothing dangerous or wild. It's something I never noticed when I was a kid but, where is everything?"

"I have noticed it as well," Wyrrin said. "When I first left Arko I spent several days wandering through a wood, and I encountered all manner of beasts in the forests, and upon the moors before I was caught and chained. Compared with the west, this land is very devoid of such things. Where have they all gone?"

"Hunted down and killed," Jason said. "Victims of man's insatiable greed and desire for domination."

"Testament to the glories of the Empire," Gideon corrected him.

Jason turned to look at him, eyebrow raised. "So one of the great triumphs of the Imperial Army was over wild goats and bears?"

"Flippancy is not necessary, Jason," Gideon said. "Such creatures as you mean, Ameliora, disappeared because there was not room for them. There was not room for them because the prosperity brought about by the Empire did not allow it. We have tamed the land - the very earth itself forced to kneel before the purple throne - and turned it to our purposes: the betterment of mankind and the advancement of the glories of the state. We churn over every field with ploughs to feed our growing nation and our armies, we chisel stone at every quarry, we mine every seam of metals base or precious. Every inch of our dominion strains to do its part in service of the throne and Empire. Would that every citizen of the state were so dedicated and industrious."

"What kind of nation would be produced by every citizen serving the so called greater good of an Empire enlightened only by comparison with the barbarians?" Jason said. "A nation of no art, no beauty, no music; no thought, no culture, no philosophy, no enlightenment. A nation dark and grey, filled with grim and grey folk of no self will, going about their empty lives in servitude and then dying. Is it not telling that, even in the Empire as it stands, we have produced no artistic works capable of matching the achievements in beauty of the Aurelian Era, and intellectually we cannot hold a candle to the pre-conquest Tyronians."

"Your analysis is flawed because it assumes that art, music, literature must be individualist endeavours, rather than works that can be put to the service of the nation as a whole. I am not opposed to any of those things, provided that they reflect some glory upon the Empire and do not mock or deride the nation that has raised and sheltered them all their lives," Gideon said. "And as for thought, the philosophies of which you speak brought the Tyronians to ruin and defeat. I think we have too much philosophy in the Empire as it is, the only philosophy which we require was that given voice by Aegea, which we have abandoned but must urgently reclaim."

"I think we retain rather too much of it already," Jason said.

"What would you craft in place, Your Highness, had you the governance o'er the commonwealth?" Michael asked.

Jason tried not to cringe at someone using o'er in actual speech, and instead concentrated on his answer. When he had collected his thoughts upon the matter - he had never been asked the question so direct before - then he began. "If I were placed at the head of the commonwealth, as you say, then I would abolish such things as nations altogether, and command all men to go their own way, masters of their own destiny.

"You two, who talk so grandly of the past of Corona or the Empire; who read of an age when men made the greatest sacrifices to preserve their country, or willingly  went to their deaths for the public good and then wonder at the degeneracy of your contemporaries; you simply fail to understand that no man may be inspired by the thought of a land far away from his home. No one will feel as strongly about a battle thousands of leagues away where ten thousand men have fallen as he will of a war that has left his neighbours dead, just as no one will feel so strongly about the ravaging of a province on the other side of the world as about the burning of his own fields. States, once they grow large, are simply too large to elicit any emotion from their citizens."

"It elicits one from me," Gideon said.

Jason did not comment on that, but rather continued. "And all of this is to ignore the fact that patriotism is responsible for one of the basest evils to inflict humankind: the tyranny of nations over nations. People must be free from obligations to thrones or cities, free to live their lives as they see fit. Once we give freedom back to the people, then all mankind's difficulties will be resolved, for what problem can withstand the ingenuity of man unfettered?"

"I think it more likely that people would simply ignore their problems if they had freedom to do so," Michael said. "There is a tale called the Wanderings of Simon and Miranda, which details the journeys that the two undertook after the defeat of the Eldest One. They did not return home to Corona until they had had many adventures and encounters with many strange and unfamiliar peoples.

"In the wilds of Lavissar they came across a tribe called the Sybarites, who dwelled in the ruins of an ancient city that they had found and occupied. The city was decrepit, falling apart, rubble lying everywhere, and yet nothing was done about it. Not only did the Sybarites lack the skill to repair the homes they had stolen, but they also lacked any inclination to do so. For the Sybarites valued nothing but pleasure: they did nothing that did not bring them joy. They only possessed food because those amongst them who loved violence and pain went out and stole it from neighbouring peoples, doing great slaughter as they went. For the rest, they frolicked in the city and paid no heed to the filth in its streets, the bodies crushed by falling masonry, the hatred that their neighbours had for them. They gave no attention to anything but their own pleasure. Their children ran naked, wailing in hunger, for their women did not find caring for their children to be sufficiently enjoyable to warrant doing. Some of the children were kidnapped when other tribes, seeking vengeance, attacked the Sybarites, killed some and carried off others. Once the raid was over the celebrations resumed and the surviving Sybarites danced over the bodies of their fellows. When Simon and Miranda went to try and rescue the kidnapped children they found them happy in the care of loving parents, who cared for them and saw to their needs. The Sybarites, who thought of nothing but their own selfish interests, died out; it is said that the very last of them still danced as he died of hunger.

"And yet Simon and Miranda also visited a people called the Severians, who devoted themselves wholly to the arts of war. All their people trained constantly for battle, exercising their muscles and practicing with spear and sword and shield. They lived in barracks made of wood and earth, and raised no greater buildings. They worked no stone, told no tales, sang no songs and created nothing that would outlast them save the memory of their victories. Nothing mattered but war, and the preparations for war, and when they were overthrown there was nothing to show that they had ever been, for what manner of nation concerns itself wholly with the wall and not at all with what the wall defends?

"To set all people free to fulfil their most base desires is an invitation for unbridled license and all the horrors that accompany. But a state in which no one does anything but serve the state is not a state deserving to be served or defended. If everyone fights, then what is being fought for? In Corona of old all firstborn sons fought to defend the principality, but they fought so well because they fought on behalf of their younger brothers and sisters, who in the meantime made Corona a land worthy of being defended to the utmost by her valiant elder sons. Some must serve or society will collapse, but if all serve then there will be no society in the first place."

"I think you underestimate the virtue of the people," Jason said.

"And I believe Your Highness overestimates it," Michael said softly. "And I dare say I have seen more of life than you have in your father's palace."

"Were the palace the only life that I had known I would have despaired of the race of man," Jason said sharply. "But I have known people in Eternal Pantheia who had nothing and yet have built a community more vibrant than all the great houses of the rich. They survive, and thrive, without the need for the Empire's law, its armies, its stifling social structures. They are without society, and yet they prove that there is no need for it."

"And I have seen folk murdered for daring to speak out against evil, terrorised by criminals hiding in the shadows while others hail those selfsame criminals as heroes. I have seen the outcasts you praise attacked and abused by those with power over them. The best is not the whole, Your Highness," Michael replied.

"No more than is the worst," Jason said.

"And yet the worst will dominate if there is not law and state power to suppress them," Michael said. "Your friends may not avail themselves of Imperial law, but they are under the protection of the Empire's army whether they would be or not. We all fought as hard as we could at Davidheyr, yet it was the Thirty Fifth that saved the city as much, more, than our own efforts. Even in the age of heroes, when men were greater and more noble than today, none were as free as you would have the inferior descendants of today become. People cannot survive without chains to tie them to community and state, to bridle their behaviour and bind them to virtue."

Jason frowned.
At times he seems naive, and at others cynical.
He shrugged. "It hardly matters, since all of these ideas are only so much wasted air. We will never be afforded opportunity to put them into practice."

Michael shook his head. "High heritage and an inheritance of virtue old as the Empire itself will out, Your Highness, especially when it is the inheritance of Emperors of which we speak. I believe you will do great things in any sphere you choose to make your own."

Tullia nodded, as if Michael had just said something sage and profound.

And there's the naivety again. From him and Tullia both. He has been a bad influence upon her.
Jason chuckled. "You yourself have a grand inheritance in that regard. Do you predict greatness for yourself?"

Michael shook his head. "I inherited the sins and weaknesses of my sire, Highness, that Miranda and Felix might gain our gentle mother's virtue untainted by that dog's vile blood. Such deeds as I do here will be wholly thanks to the influence of my comrades."

"And what of my mother," Jason said. "What have I inherited from her?"

Tullia said. "Your mother placed you where you might be raised in comfort, Your Highness; she did what was best for you even if it was hard for her. That speaks well of her, as I see it."

"She abandoned me," Jason reminded her; although he greatly desired to find out who she was and meet her, he would not forget why a search was necessary, and an explanation would be the first thing he would demand of her.

Tullia's eyes flashed. "There is no shame in admitting that you cannot care for the one you love as they deserve, or that others can better provide for their needs. The true crime is in making the one you care for suffer from your own selfishness."

"Have I given you offence?"

"I am Your Highness's servant, it is impossible for you to offend me," Tullia said in a prim voice.

"Yet a gentleman would consider his words all the more carefully because of that," Michael said.

Jason eyed him suspiciously. "You are not both going to try and civilise me are you?"