The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series) (56 page)

But Captain Thorne was appalled. “Sir! What
happened? Offra, what’d you do to the colonel?” He stood in front
of the command tower doors, his hands on his waist.

The colonel laughed lightly and put a hand on
Offra’s shoulder. “Relax, Captain. We did this to ourselves. Just
missed the mark. Quite refreshing, actually. Offra, go change and
get back up to the tower. Captain, don’t you have something you
should be doing?”

Thorne knew all kinds of things he should be
doing; firstly, he would have made sure the colonel wasn’t shamed
and humiliated in front of his men.

But all he said was, “I’m doing all I can to
serve you, sir.”

He didn’t understand the scowl of the
colonel. Even though he’d sidled as much as he could to be under
his wing, there was so much about Perrin Shin he just didn’t get.
But he would, when he was his son-in-law. And then he’d get the
rest of the world.

But for now, he headed to the barracks for a
surprise inspection, fuming. Why did Shin bother with Offra? That
insignificant—

Thorne stopped dead in his tracks, a most
revolting thought occurring to him as he remembered the words of
his mother: Jaytsy will feel obliged to love the man her father
most approves of.

Thorne clenched his fist.

It was Offra!

He was trying to impress the colonel to get
to his daughter! But Offra was so hopelessly incompetent, so
completely wrong for Jaytsy. He had no army heritage, no
family—weren’t his parents dead?—and no ability to become more than
a second-rate officer.

Lemuel turned to the officer’s quarters and
noticed the door to Offra’s room had just shut. Thorne pounded on
the door.

“
Yes?” he heard Offra’s
muffled voice. “Enter?”

Thorne opened the door and did his best to
smile.

Offra squinted nervously, stopping in
mid-motion to remove his white undershirt.

“
Just seeing if you need
any assistance, Offra?”

“
To change my
clothes?”

Lemuel realized it sounded stupid too. “I
wanted to apologize to you for snapping out there. I was just
surprised.”

Offra’s eyes grew bigger. “That’s quite all
right, sir. No offense taken.” He pulled off the wet shirt and
dropped it on the ground. “Good thing my washing was finished
yesterday,” he chuckled tensely. “Everything should dry soon in
this heat.” He looked at Thorne to see if he was going to watch him
remove his trousers.

“
I, uh, was just wondering
. . .” Thorne tried to find the best way to bring it up, “how often
you and the colonel run?”

Offra sat on his bed to pull of his boots.
They made a squishing sound as he yanked one off, and water poured
out on the wooden floor. Offra smiled uncomfortably at it. “Several
times a week, sir. Long run once a week.”

Thorne nodded slowly, shifting his own boot
slightly to keep it from the growing puddle on the ground. “And do
you ever run by the colonel’s house?”

Offra shrugged as he removed the other
sloshing boot. “I suppose we do. We run past every house in
Edge.”

Thorne stepped back to avoid being touched by
the new splash of water. “So you’re familiar with the colonel’s
home, then.”

Offra sighed. “Sure,” he said. “Captain, I’m
not sure where this is going—”

“
You really don’t, do you?”
Thorne squinted. “Let’s keep it that way.”

And he walked out of the room, leaving a
baffled Offra.

Chapter 21
~
“It was an
ambush! Look at us!”

A
week later Colonel
Shin stood in front of his soldiers gathered in the training arena.
There was another duty ahead of them, not as deadly as Moorland to
be sure, but fearsome in its own way.

“
Men,” he announced loudly,
as if he needed to draw their attention even though they were
already watching him intently.

Captain Thorne had told them there was yet
another difficult task, and that had all of the soldiers wondering.
Since the Guarders had been wiped out several moons ago, the world
had been silent . . . except for the trouble caused by many
teenagers who seemingly had nothing else to do since they had no
Guarders to steal for anymore. So for some reason roving bands of
boys had found it entertaining to scatter livestock and spend their
nights removing wheels off of wagons. Fortunately the same boys
were also stupid, and left those wagon wheels on the front
doorsteps of girls they liked so it was relatively easy for
Mahrree, Peto, and Jaytsy to suggest to Perrin who was at fault
based on who they had heard was trying to impress someone else. As
a result, Perrin now had a list of teenage boys who needed some
rehabilitation.

That’s where the soldiers came in.

“
As you know,” he said as
he slowly paced in front of them, “we still have a problem with the
youth of Edge. We also have a problem with the fact that many
Edgers passed away this year because of the pox. And we have an
additional issue that many of them planted gardens and crops
intended to fill our storehouses, which gardens and crops are now
not
being tended to.”

Perrin noticed his soldiers squirming,
worried that he was about to recruit them to be farmers.

“
Soldiers, not only does
Edge have this situation, but the entire world. The Administrator
of Security has embraced this plan of every village in the world
raising extra to store against difficult years.”

He didn’t go on to tell them that the
document so thoroughly created by Lieutenant Offra explaining the
idea and sent to Giyak, on Perrin’s recommendation, was accepted by
Idumea but not acknowledged. Instead, the initiative for
storehouses came solely from Giyak’s office.

When Perrin broke the news to Offra, who was
likely hoping for a promotion for his work—as if anyone would be
allowed in Fort Shin to be promoted to the same level of Thorne—the
modest lieutenant merely nodded that it was all right.

But Perrin had told him a few weeks
ago
,
“It’s more than all right, Jon. What we’ve established
here is an excellent idea. But now that Idumea has its hands on it,
they’ll mess it up somehow—mark my words. And when they do, the
blame will go straight back to Giyak and the Administrators, not to
us here at Edge.”

Offra had smiled at that, and he was smiling
again now at the back of the training arena because he knew what
was coming next.

“
So men, while Idumea has
recently sent me a decree that we are to demand that the citizens
help with the care of the extra plantings—”

Actually, Idumea was demanding forced
labor—at point of sword, if necessary—to take care of the
crops.

Perrin’s gaze fell upon Lieutenant Offra
again who, for once, wasn’t trying to look shorter than he was. He
was beaming back at Perrin because when he read the report from
Idumea, he recognized the wisdom of his commander.

“
Sir!” he had exclaimed,
“you’re right! Can you imagine if we had taken all the credit for
the idea? Right now we’d be having to take all the blame, too, for
people being forced to weed and harvest. But sir, how did you
know?”

“
Seriously, Jon? You
thought the government would do this
right
? Tell me the last
thing they did really right.”

When Offra didn’t have a ready answer, Perrin
pointed at him. “Remember this moment when you first realized that
the government can’t properly take care of people. In fact, that’s
never been their responsibility. They’re supposed to keep our
borders safe so that we can live as we wish. It’s our
responsibility—yours and mine and Zenos’s and everyone else’s—to
take care of each other.”

To that, Offra fired off the snappiest salute
Perrin had ever seen.

He looked like he was about to do it again,
too, as Perrin continued his speech to the soldiers.

“
Men, I don’t want you
forcing the good and law-abiding citizens of Edge into taking care
of their neighbor’s storehouse crops. Instead, Offra and I have
developed one plan to solve all problems: we have a number of
teenage boys with too much time on their hands. Starting this
afternoon we’re taking those boys and we will let
them
do a
bit of weeding and harvesting and working for the
village.”

Perrin hadn’t expected his soldiers to laugh
and cheer, and he watched Offra as the reticent soldier guffawed at
the enthusiastic response. Lieutenant Radan was also smiling, but
as Perrin’s gaze traveled to the side of the room to Captain
Thorne, he was scowling.

When Perrin told him of the plan yesterday,
the captain was completely astonished.

“
But . . . but this is not
an approved method of using the soldiers, sir!” It was rare
nowadays that Thorne countered Perrin, too eager to try to stay on
his good side. But every now and then the books he had so dutifully
memorized burbled out of him.

“
Aren’t we supposed to be
keeping the village secure?” Perrin had reminded him.

“
Well, yes, sir,
but—”

“
And don’t the teenagers of
Edge pose a security threat?”

“
Well, naturally,
but—”

“
And isn’t filling our
storehouses another security concern?”

“
Well, there’s a case to be
made that—”

“
And how many more ‘wells’
do you plan to dig, Captain?”

That threw Thorne completely off course,
allowing Perrin to walk away from him before the captain could
protest.

When the soldiers quieted their cheering,
Perrin continued. “Men, Offra has a chart prepared and posted, and
there you will see what supervising duties you have over the next
couple of weeks. You will go out in force accompanying our bored
little boys, surrounding them in the fields, and making sure they
do their duty for once. Captain Thorne will lead the first group
today, and thirty of you will assist him. I promise that all of you
will have an opportunity to sun yourselves as you
guard
our
laborers. Dismissed!”

---

Mahrree normally wasn’t one for sneaking
around, but so curious to see if Perrin could really get some of
her students to work, she made an exception. About the time she
knew Captain Thorne would be leading out a group of twenty of
Edge’s youth to a large garden on the west side, Mahrree slipped
out of her house and followed from a safe distance.

She noticed that the soldiers seemed to enjoy
their task of keeping the boys paired up and marching in parade
behind Thorne, but Mahrree could hear the annoyance of the captain
when he ordered the boys to get down on their knees among the
plants.

Mahrree slipped behind a large bush next to
the now-empty house to which the garden was attached and settled in
for the show.

As the soldiers formed a perimeter around the
field where the teenagers reluctantly placed themselves, Thorne
began pacing and shooting menacing glares while a sergeant
explained which green things were vegetables and which green things
were weeds that needed extracting.

With rapt fascination Mahrree watched as the
boys reluctantly began to pull out weeds and toss them any which
way. A few times some began to complain loudly, until Thorne
marched over and shouted in their ears that it was this or
incarceration. Mahrree didn’t think his strong-armed approach was
entirely
what her husband was expecting when he wanted the
boys “rehabilitated.”

There’s discipline, Mahrree knew, and then
there’s abuse. The first works while the second never does. And
some people, like Lemuel Thorne, had no idea there was even a
difference.

Mahrree began to notice something. She was
too far away to see clearly, but it was obvious to her that the
boys were sending some kind of silent messages, probably a system
they worked out when they were still employed by the Guarders.

Mahrree bit her lip in anticipation, sure
that the boys were thick in planning with their subtle gestures.
But Thorne was too busy practicing an elongated stride that looked
as if he was avoiding stepping into manure to notice.

Mahrree wondered how she could send Thorne a
warning, but then—

One boy coughed.

At that, each young man yanked tomatoes off
the vines they were weeding and pelted the soldiers with red,
orange, and green projectiles. Mahrree knew she shouldn’t laugh,
but she couldn’t help it once she realized the main target was
Captain Thorne. She covered her mouth and collapsed in a fit of
shaking behind the shrub.

But it wasn’t as if anyone would have heard
her; the soldiers exclaimed so loudly nothing else could be heard,
except for the gleeful laughter of the boys as they fled in every
direction. Two rushed so closely past Mahrree that they nearly
tripped over her boots which stuck out a bit.

By the time Mahrree composed herself enough
to peer out from behind the bush not a single teenager remained.
Behind her, the sound of a horse trotting to the scene caused her
to cower even further behind the bush, especially when she heard
the booming voice.

“
Captain! Exactly what just
happened here?”

“
Colonel Shin!” Thorne
panted, shocked, angry, and now a bit panicked as an orange smudge
dribbled down his face. “Sir, they surprised us! It was an ambush!
Look at us!”

Mahrree kept her hand firmly over her mouth
as she heard, “Oh, I
see
you all right. All of you. Please,
do tell me,” Perrin said in his most condescending tone, “what
mortal threat is there associated with lobbed tomatoes? What terror
of vegetables is there that would cause each of these men to NOT
pursue their responsibilities?”