The Deed of Paksenarrion (5 page)

“I’ve got my own gods,” she said finally. “And that’s enough for me. My family has followed the same gods for generations, and I won’t change. Besides, however good a fighter Gird was, he can’t have turned into a god. That’s not where gods come from.” And she turned her back on Effa and walked off.

Meanwhile, she and Saben and Vik discussed religions in a very different way, fascinated by each other’s background.

“Now my family,” said Saben. “We were horse nomads once—my father’s father’s grandfather. Now we raise cattle, but we still carry a bit of hoof with us, and dance under the forelock and tail at weddings and funerals.”

“Do you worship—uh—horses?” asked Vik.

“No, of course not. We worship Thunder-of-horses, the north wind, and the dark-eyed Mare of Plenty, though my father says that’s really the same as Alyanya, the Lady of Peace. Then my uncle’s family—I’ve seen them dance to Guthlac—”

“The Hunter?”

“Yes. My father always goes home then. He doesn’t approve.”

“I should think not.” Vik shivered.

“City boy,” teased Paks. “We gather the sheep in from the wild hunt, but we know Guthlac has great power.”

“I know that. It’s
what
power—brrr. Now in my family, we worship the High Lord, Alyanya, and Sertig and Adyan—”

“Who are they?” asked Paks.

“Sertig’s the Maker, surely you know that. Craftsmen follow him. Adyan is the Namer—
true
-Namer—of all things. My father’s a harper, and harpers deal much with names.”

“You’re a harper’s son?” asked Saben. Vik nodded. “But you’ve no voice at all!”

“True enough,” said Vik, shrugging. “And no skill with a harp either, though I had one in my hands as soon as I could pluck a string. My father tried to make a scribe of me, and I wrote as badly as I played. And got into trouble, liking to fight. So—” he looked at his hands. “So it became—wise—for me to move away, and make use of the skill I did have.”

“Which is?” asked Saben slyly.

In an instant Vik had turned, gotten his hold, and flipped Saben onto his back. “Throwing down great lummoxes of cattle farmers, for one.” Saben laughed and rolled back up to a sitting position.

“I see your point,” he said cheerfully. “But will it work against a thousand southern spearmen?”

“It won’t have to. You and Paks will be up front, you lucky tall ones, and you can protect me.”

After several weeks of switching places in formation, they received their permanent assignments. “Permanent until you do something stupid,” Bosk said. Paks, to her delight, was made file leader. She still had problems with Korryn, who teased and pestered her whenever the corporals weren’t around, but aside from that she had returned to her earlier pleasure in being in an army. She did wish that brawling were not forbidden. She was sure she could flatten Korryn, and ached for a chance. But after the formal punishment of three recruits from Kefer’s unit who had livened a dull rainy afternoon by starting a fight, she was determined to keep her temper. She did not want to lose her new position.

One afternoon a troop of soldiers in the Duke’s colors rode up from the southeast, and were passed by the gate guards into the courtyard. The fifteen men, under command of a yellow-haired corporal, were immensely impressive to the recruits. And they knew it, and swaggered accordingly.

“Get the quartermaster,” the corporal ordered a recruit from another unit, and the recruit scurried away. Paksenarrion, taking her turn at cut-and-thrust practice with Siger, was tempted to turn and look, but the Armsmaster brought her attention back with a thump in the ribs.

“When you’re fighting, fight,” he said grumpily. “You be gazing around at everything on earth and heaven, and you’ll be buzzard-bait soon enough.”

Paks concentrated on trying to slash past his defenses, but the old man was more than a match for her, and talked on without a break as she grew more and more breathless. “Eh, now, that’s too wide a backswing—what’d I tell you? See, you left your side open again. Somebody’ll plant a blade in there when you’re careless. Quicker, lass, quicker! You ought to be quicker nor an old man like me. Look now, I gave you an opening wide as a barn door for a thrust, and you used that same wide cut. Stop now—”

Paks lowered her wooden blade, gasping for breath.

“You’re strong enough,” Siger said. “But strong’s not the whole game. You’ve got to be quick, and you’ve got to think as fast as you move. Now let’s break the thrust stroke down into its parts again.” He demonstrated, then had Paks go through the motions several times. “Let’s try that again. Don’t stand flat-footed: you need to move.”

This time practice seemed to go more smoothly, and at last Paks’s blade slipped past his to touch his side. “Ah-h,” he said. “That’s it.” Twice more that afternoon she got a touch on him, and was rewarded with one of his rare smiles. “But you still must be quicker!” was his parting comment.

It seemed to Paksenarrion that events had moved with blinding speed. Only that afternoon she had been a file leader, and Siger had praised her. Now she was shivering on the stone sleeping bench of an underground cell, out of sight and sound of everyone, cold, hungry, frightened, and in more trouble that she’d dreamed possible. Even with cold stone under her, and the painful drag of chains on her wrists and ankles, she could hardly believe it had really happened. How could she be in such trouble for something someone else had done? Her head throbbed, and her ears still rang from the fight. Every separate muscle and bone had a distinctive and private pain to add.

It was so quiet that she could clearly hear the blood rushing through her head, and the clink of the chains when she shifted on the bench rang loudly. And the dark! She’d never been afraid of the dark, but this was a different dark: a shut-in, thick, breathless dark. How would she know when dawn came? Her breath quickened, rasping in the silence, as she tried to fight down panic. Surely they wouldn’t leave her down here to die? She clamped her teeth against a cry that fought its way up from her chest. It came out as a soft groan. She could not—could
not
—stand this place any longer. Another wave of nausea overcame her, and she felt hastily for the bucket between her feet. She had nothing left to heave into it, but felt better knowing it was there. When the spasm passed, she wiped her mouth on her tattered sleeve.

Her breathing had just begun to ease again, when she thought she heard a sound. She froze. What now? The sound grew louder, but still so muffled by stone walls and thick door that she could not define it. Rhythmic—was it steps? Was the long night already over? She saw a gleam of light above the heavy door; it brightened. Something clinked against the door; it grated open, letting in a flood of yellow torchlight. Paks blinked against it, as the torchbearer set his light in a holder just inside the cell door. Then he pulled the door closed, and turned to face her, leaning on the wall under the torch. It was Stammel: but a Stammel so forbidding that Paks dared not say a word, but stared at him in silence. After a long pause, during which he looked her up and down, he sighed and shook his head.

“I thought you had more sense, Paks,” he said heavily. “Whatever he said, you shouldn’t have hit him. Surely you—”

“It wasn’t what he said, sir—it was what he
did—"
 

“The story is that he asked you to bed him, and teased you when you wouldn’t. And then you jumped him, and—”

“No, sir! That’s not—”

“Paksenarrion, this is serious. You’ll be lucky if you aren’t turned out
tinisi turin—
you know what
that
is, sheepfarmer’s daughter—” Paks nodded, remembering the old term for a clean-shorn lamb, also used for running off undesirables shaved and naked. “Lies won’t help.”

“But, sir—”

“Let me finish. If what he says is true, the best you can hope for—the very best—is three months with the quarriers, and one more chance with a new recruit unit, since
I
haven’t taught you what you should know. If you say he’s lying, you’ll have to convince us that a veteran of five campaign seasons, a man with a good reputation in the Company, would be so stupid in the first place, and lie about it in the second. Why should we believe you? I’ve known you—what? Nine weeks? Ten? I’ve known him nearly six years. Now if your story is true, and if you can prove it some way, tell me. I’ll tell the captain tomorrow, and we’ll see. If not, just be quiet, and pray the captain will count your bruises into your punishment.”

“Yes, sir.” Paks glanced up at Stammel’s stern face. It was even worse than she’d thought, if Stammel thought she could be lying.

“Well? Which is it to be?”

Paks looked down at her bruised hands. “Sir, he asked me to come to the back of the room—he didn’t say why, but he was a corporal, so I went. And then he took my arm—” she faltered and her right arm quivered. “And tried to get me to bed him. And I said no, and he wouldn’t let go, but went on—” She glanced at Stammel again. His expression did not change; her eyes dropped. “He said he was sure I wasn’t a virgin, not with my looks, and that I must’ve bedded—someone—to be a file leader—”

“Say that again! He said what?”

“That I must have—earned that position—on my back, he said.”

“Did he say with whom?” asked Stammel, his voice grimmer than before.

“No, sir.”

Stammel grunted. “Go on, then.”

“I—I was angry—about that—”

“So you hit him.”

“No, sir.” Paks shook her head for emphasis, but the nausea took her again, and she heaved repeatedly into the bucket. Finally she looked up, trembling with the aftermath. “I didn’t hit him, but I did get angry because that’s not how I got it, and I started to—to say bad things—” She heaved again. “—that I learned from my cousin,” she finished.

“Drink this,” said Stammel, handing her a flask. “If you’re going to heave so much, you need something down, ban or no.”

Paks swallowed the cold water gratefully. “Then, sir, he was angry for what I said—”

“It couldn’t have been
that
bad—what did you say?”

“Pargsli spakin i tokko—”

“D’you know what that means, girl?”

“No—my cousin said it was bad.”

A flicker of amusement relaxed Stammel’s face for a moment. “It is. I suggest you learn what curses mean before you say them. Then what?”

“He clapped a hand over my mouth, and tried to push me down on the bunk.” She took another swallow of water.

“Yes?”

“So I bit his hand, to make him let go, and he did and I got free. But he was between me and the door, and he took off his belt—”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yes, sir. He threatened to beat me, to tame me, and then he swung the belt, and I ran at him, trying to get away. I thought I could push past him, maybe, the way I did with my father. But he grabbed my throat—” her hand rose, unconsciously, “—and hit my face, and—and I couldn’t breathe. I thought be would kill me, and I
had
to fight. I had to breathe—”

“Hmmph. That sounds more like the recruit I thought I had. Tell the rest of it.”

“I—it’s hard to remember. I broke the throat hold, but I couldn’t get away, he was so fast and strong. We were on the floor, mostly, and he was yelling at me—hitting—I remember feeling weaker, and then someone was holding my arms, and someone was hitting me. I suppose that was after you came, though wasn’t it?”

Stammel’s face wore a puzzled frown. “No one hit you after I got there. When I came in Korryn was hanging onto you, Stephi was lying on the floor, and Korryn said he’d just then been able to pull you off. Captain Sejek wanted to hit you, all right, but he didn’t.” Stammel sighed. “If you’re telling the truth, girl, I can see why you fought. But Korryn was there, or says he was, and his story is against yours, as well as Stephi.”

“He was there, at the beginning, but he just laughed. I—I am telling the truth, sir, really I am.” Paks swallowed noisily. “But I can see why you wouldn’t believe me, if you’ve known him—Stephi?—so long. Only, that’s what really happened, sir, no matter what Korryn says.”

“If it were only your word against Korryn’s—” Stammel paused and stretched, then shifted his weight to the other leg. “Paks have you bedded anyone here?”

“No, sir.”

“You’ve been asked, surely?”

“Yes, sir, but I haven’t. I don’t want to. And I asked Maia—”

“Maia?”

“The quartermaster’s assistant. I asked her if I had to, and she said no, but not to make a fuss about being asked, like I might at home.”

“Has Korryn bothered you about it?”

Paks began to tremble, remembering Korryn’s constant teasing, taunting attempts to force her into bed with him. “He’s asked me,” she whispered.

“Paks, look at me.” She looked up. “Has he done more than ask?”

“He—he has sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you say something to me or Bosk?”

Paks shook her head. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to—to make a fuss. I thought I was supposed to take care of it—”

“You aren’t supposed to act like a new wench in an alehouse, no. But no fighter should have to put up with that sort of thing from a companion. When you refuse, they’re supposed to drop it; there’s plenty enough that are willing. I wish I’d known; we’d have put a stop to that.” He paused briefly. “Are you a sisli?”

“I—I don’t know what that is. He—the corporal—asked me that too.”

“Like Barranyi and Natzlin in Kefer’s unit. A woman who beds women. Are you?”

“No, sir. Not that I know of. Does it matter?”

“Not really.” Stammel shifted his weight again and sighed. “Paks, I want to believe you. You’ve been a good recruit so far. But I just don’t know—and even if I believe you, there’s the captain. Sejek is—umph. You’re in more trouble than most people find in a whole enlistment.”

Paks felt tears sting her eyes. It was hopeless. If Stammel still thought she could be lying, no one else would believe her. She thought briefly of Saben, who had left before the fight broke out—why hadn’t he stayed? Her belly turned again, and she heaved the water she’d drunk into the bucket. She hurt all over, and tomorrow could only be worse. A sob shook her body, then another one. She tried to choke them back.