A Sellsword's Resolve, page 28
part #3 of Seven Virtues Series
My father always said, Co spoke, that any solution that calls for violence is no solution at all. Still, you must understand that you did what you had to do, Aaron. Belgarin will not stop—you know that.
Did I, firefly? He thought. Perhaps, someday, he would agree. Perhaps, when the smell of burning flesh wasn’t still coating his nostrils, when the desperate screams and pleas of the dying weren’t still echoing in his ears, he would be able to believe that, to take some satisfaction in the thing. Now, though, he was only tired, weary beyond anything he had ever known.
“Aaron!”
He turned at the sound of his name and before he could react, Adina was jumping into his arms. He stumbled, surprised and weak from the labors he’d put his body through, but he managed to keep his feet. “Gods,” she said, pulling him so tight that it hurt, though he would have never told her so, “I’m so glad you’re okay. I was worried.”
For several seconds, he did not speak, content to hold her tight against him, to feel her breath on the side of his face, to inhale the scent of her. As he did, he thought he could almost feel the trials of the last few weeks sloughing away, the smell of burning flesh growing fainter, the piercing screams of the dying growing weaker and weaker. “I didn’t know you’d be waiting,” he said, finally.
“And not just the princess, Mr. Envelar.”
Aaron looked up to see Leomin staring at him, and though his face smiled, his eyes seemed to communicate compassion, some understanding of what Aaron and those men with him had undertaken. “It is good to see you alive and well, Mr. Envelar,” the Parnen said.
“And you as well, Leomin.”
“Would you like me to show you to your horse?” Leomin said, gesturing toward what Aaron knew were two hundred horses behind him staked to the ground, and what appeared to be at least a few hundred troops mounted on their own chargers.
“My men first,” Aaron said, glancing back at the exhausted soldiers, some lying or sitting on the ground, others standing propped against trees as if they would fall had they not the trunk’s support.
“Of course,” Leomin said, nodding as if he’d expected as much. He turned, “I will get the soldiers—”
But the mounted men were already moving, dismounting and leading horses forward. Many of the Ghosts could not seem to rise of their own power, and the soldiers helped pull them to their feet without hesitation, draping their arms across their shoulders even as the ones with no one to help clapped, a sound that was thunderous in the near silent day. At the sound and the kindness, some of the haunted looks left the faces of the men with whom Aaron had fought. Not all the way of course, never that, for there were some things that, when seen, could never been unseen. There were some memories that would plague a man as long as he lived, a weight that he would drag behind him until his death. Still, he could see in their weary faces a gratitude that would have been impossible to express in words, that would have sounded cheap and trite, but that was more real than anything those men had ever felt, anything that Aaron himself had felt.
It was not the recognition, as such, not the shouts of approval, but the awareness, the understanding that those who had gone out into the woods, whether now alive or dead, had given up a piece of themselves, had left it somewhere back there beneath the boughs of the trees, among the burning corpses and the screams of the dying.
“Thank you for coming,” Aaron said, speaking to Adina and Leomin. “Thank you.”
Adina pulled him close again, “Always,” she said, her breath warm against the side of his face. “Always.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Wendell walked out of the room he’d been given to answer the prince’s—king, he reminded himself, here in Cardayum, he’s king—summons, brushing ineffectually at the wrinkles that had seemed to appear out of nowhere in his tunic and trousers. He’d been staying in the castle for over a week, yet he was beginning to think that the general would have been better off sending someone else. He’d tried to learn what he could of Commander Hallifax and Ellemont’s queen, of course, stealing moments to speak with the castle’s servants and guards, but he was not a clever man, able to elicit information from people without their knowing it. Besides, his was not a face that exactly engendered trust. One more likely to send children running and screaming, a cautionary tale to any who dreamed of being soldiers.
He had not, in fact, even been able to discover exactly where the queen had gone when she had left almost immediately following their return to the capital. When he’d asked the prince in one of their meetings, Ellemont had only waved it away, explaining that the mountain climate grew too harsh for his queen’s delicate constitution at times, and that she sometimes left for a few weeks until her strength was renewed. It had seemed to Wendell that Ellemont’s expression had held more than a little relief at the queen’s absence.
Still, her sudden disappearance had appeared suspicious to Wendell, but there’d been no way to extricate himself to follow her as his duty—at least so far as the prince was concerned—was to coordinate their defenses with the prince’s own. Not that he’d done much coordinating since he’d arrived. Unless you could call sitting in a room with the general and the prince and several members of the army’s support staff, listening to them jaw on about strategy and tactics, about the formation of their army until Wendell was just about ready to fall asleep—had fallen asleep, at least two times of which he was aware—coordinating.
He made his way through the hallways of the castle, having to stop twice to ask a servant or guard for directions to the king’s study as he continually got turned around in hallways that looked identical. He was not a man for castles and great halls that was all. He was a man for open spaces, for fields and forests and a drunken game of dice every now and then. He’d no sooner been led to his room on the first day after arriving than he had become hopelessly lost. Still, he finally made it to the door that led to the king’s study, and the two guards eyed him dubiously.
“State your business.” One said.
“How about you state yours?” Wendell said, immediately regretting the words. His ma had always told him that his mouth would get him into trouble one day, a prediction that had proven true on a number of occasions, yet he couldn’t seem to stop it. “What I mean to say—” he blurted, noting the way the guards’ hands had moved to the swords sheathed at their sides, “is that the pri—err, the king sent for me.”
“Oh, that’s right,” one of the guards said, “you’re the diplomat from Isalla, come to help coordinate the defense against Belgarin.”
Wendell grinned, “Diplomat, is it? A promotion, then. Maybe I’ll just hang around here for a while, might end up bein’ king before too long, aye?”
The guards didn’t smile at the joke, instead he saw that their frowns were even darker than they had been. “That is,” Wendell said, clearing his throat, “I’ve a letter King Ellemont sent me, if you’ve a mind to read it.” Neither of the two spoke, and Wendell hurriedly produced the letter from the inside of his tunic, handing it to one of the stone-faced guards.
The man opened it and glanced through it, noting the king’s seal at the bottom. “Very well,” he said, “you may enter.” The two guards swung the doors open and let the scarred sergeant inside, closing the doors after he entered.
“A funny guy,” the first said, grinning.
“Yes,” the second said shaking his head and snorting a laugh, “be king, he said. Right funny bastard, alright.”
Wendell had not been in the king’s study before. The other meetings, so far at least, had taken place in the throne room or audience chamber and he was shocked by the number of shelves, all lined with books, that lined the walls. In the town Wendell had come from, few people knew how to read, let alone owned a book. Such a thing was considered an extravagance to people who spent their time farming, fishing, or hunting for food to feed their families. He started counting but realized after a dozen or so that he wasn’t sure he could count that high. His mother had taught him long ago, he was sure, but he’d never really had cause to use it and certainly not about books.
“Ah, Sergeant Wendell, it is a pleasure to see you again.”
Wendell turned to see the prince staring at him, along with five other people, the commander, the queen—and when had she returned, for Wendell had known nothing of it—along with three men whose faces had grown familiar to Wendell over the last week. They were the commander’s highest-ranking captains, the army split between the three of them. Wendell had asked Hallifax about it, and he’d claimed that doing so made for great morale as each soldier felt himself to be part of a team, and that it also gave the opportunity for friendly competition during war games and tournaments. As far as Wendell had seen, it mostly just gave the three captains reason to scowl at each other, each of them trying to outdo the other in any way they could. Wendell thought sure that if one of the men stood up and started takin’ a piss, the other two would do the same, if only to see who had the best range. Still, he wasn’t a general or a prince, so he didn’t pretend to know one way or the other. “I appreciate you inviting me, prince,” he said, sketching an awkward bow.
“Of course,” Ellemont said, grinning, “please have a seat.” He motioned to one of the empty chairs at the table, and Wendell moved toward it, noticing the fine craftsmanship of the wood before he took his seat.
Once he was seated, Ellemont nodded, “I have called you all here because we’ve received word from my sisters that Belgarin’s army is on the march. My brother’s advanced scouts have already entered the Orlen Forest outside of Perennia, and apparently, General Envelar sent some two hundred men to harry their progress.”
One of the general’s captains scoffed at that, “Two hundred men to stand up against fifteen thousand? This general sounds like a fool.”
“Like someone else I know,” another one of the captains said, eyeing the first man who scowled, “Still,” the second captain went on, “I must admit that it seems a foolhardy move. Two hundred men against an army in the woods?” He shook his head, “A suicide mission. One can only hope that not all of Perennia’s soldiers share the same tendencies, or else this war will be over before it is truly even begun.”
Wendell felt his face heat in an odd mixture of anger and shame. His place was beside General Envelar and the others, not here in a prince’s study with armchairs that would have no doubt sold for more than the house he grew up in. This place was alien to him, alien and strange, and he felt as helpless as these prettily dressed fops would no doubt be if they encountered a man with a blade in his hand and blood on his mind and never mind all their talk. He shifted uncomfortably as the third captain chimed in, saying some poorly-veiled insult to the second, but Wendell was barely listening. And anyway, he was no fan of war, no lover of the chaos and violence it brought, but say this for the inevitable threat of violence—it had a way of teaching men to be, if not exactly civil, usually polite. Or at least well-armed. These men were neither of those things—the type of men who his father had called ‘Armchair warriors’. Wendell had never really understood the term, but he understood it well enough now. When Wendell asked, his father had told him that the term referred to men who knew nothing of war, and yet sat around in the safety of their own homes and talked about it. Wendell had never really understood that. Sure, he’d killed men before, but it was never something he wanted to talk about. Women or ale, shit the weather in a pinch, but not that. And anyway, he thought he’d found another meaning of the term, one that, to him at least, made more sense. The men were armchair warriors on account of listening to ‘em yap would tempt a man to break his chair over their heads.
“I am sure,” the prince said frowning, “that General Envelar has his reasons. If you would have met him, perhaps you would understand better.” He turned to his own commander, grinning, “A marvelous man, was he not, Commander Halifax?”
The general opened his mouth to speak, obviously uncomfortable with the question, but it was the queen who spoke, “Yes, yes, Ellemont, I’m sure he is a fine man, yet even fine men, I find,” her eyes getting what, to Wendell, at least, seemed like a distant look, as if though she spoke of the general her thoughts were on some other man, “that even fine men can make bad decisions.”
“Just so, my queen,” said one of the captains, clapping his hands softly, “Just so. And even fine men can be fools.”
Wendell found that he’d clenched his teeth to keep from speaking out of turn. He reminded himself that they were allies, that Aaron had sent him here for a reason—the gods alone knew what had possessed the man—and that anything he said or did would reflect on Aaron and, thereby, all of Perennia. He wondered what his mother would say, if she heard of her son—a son who’d spent the majority of his childhood trying to ride cows or other similar nonsense—having such responsibility. In truth, he thought her most likely answer would be to faint. Not that she was a fainting woman, but still … everyone had their limits.
“It is true,” another of the men said, “that only an amateur would take on such impossible odds, thereby risking the lives of all those who follow him.”
Wendell frowned, truly angry now, then glanced at the prince. For his part, Ellemont looked confused and slightly embarrassed as if he did not know what to say, a man who was not used to taking charge when taking charge was necessary. Wendell’s gaze moved to the queen and noted a small smile on her face. Frustrated, he turned to the commander but the man did not seem inclined to call his subordinates down for their disrespect.
“Who is this General Envelar, anyway?” The third asked, “Some whore’s son from Avarest, I hear. And what, I wonder, does a born criminal know of war and how does one such as he become a general in the first place? What?” He said, snickering, “did he win his position in some back-alley card game?” He turned to Wendell as the other two laughed, apparently having called a truce for the moment in the face of a common enemy, “No offense meant, of course.”
Wendell told himself to stay calm, to relax. After all, the men’s’ words were no more than that, and words could not hurt a man unless he let them. It was as much of a surprise to him as the others, then, when he stood and grabbed hold of his chair—the wood surprisingly heavy—and brought it crashing down against the head of the nearest, snickering captain.
Thick, hardened wood met the man’s head and when one gave, it was not the chair. The man crumpled, his own chair toppling backward and spilling him unconscious onto the ground.
There were shouts of surprise from the others, and Wendell turned to see them staring at him open-mouthed, too stunned to speak. He cleared his throat and motioned to the unconscious man with his head, “Good chairs.” Then he took a step toward the other two captains, and he couldn’t help but feel some satisfaction as they recoiled slightly, raising their arms and whimpering. “Thing about war,” he said to one, “is that it’s the type of thing some fellas die in. Though I don’t suspect you’ve any plans of seein’ it firsthand yourself. And as for you,” he said, turning to the man who’d called Aaron an amateur, “I understand you’ve some grasp of what a professional soldier is, considering how ready you are to label those who you don’t think qualified. Tell me, then, how many scraps have you been in?”
The man glanced around at the others as if looking for help. The queen’s mouth was working now, but no words were coming out, and the commander had risen from his chair, his hand going to the sword belted at his side but, for the time at least, he remained still. “N-none,” the man said, “I don’t … sir, we did not mean any offense.”
Wendell grunted, sitting the chair back down on the floor before sliding into it. “Oh, right,” he said, glancing at the unconscious man, “No offense, fella.”
Finally, the queen seemed to find her voice, and her words came out shrill and angry, “Commander,” she hissed, “take this man to the dungeons now.”
“Of course, my queen,” he said, his mouth set into a hard, angry line. Wendell sighed as he watched the man come, thinking that maybe a life spent on a farm and in the woods hadn’t been such a bad thing, after all.
“Commander Hallifax, wait.”
The commander turned to look at his prince, and Ellemont shook his head, “You know as well as I that your man had it coming. Sergeant Wendell here did what any good soldier would do—he took up for his commanding officer. I will not see him punished for that.”
“Don’t be a fool, Ellemont,” Lyla hissed, her face twisted with disgust, “This man came into your castle and assaulted one of your captains. He will be punished fittingly, of course.” She waved a hand to the commander who started toward Wendell once more.
“You take another step, Hallifax,” Ellemont said, his voice dangerous, “and you will find yourself in the dungeon before the day is out. Do I make myself clear?”
The commander recoiled as if he’d been slapped, his eyes going wide, and Wendell got the impression that the king rarely spoke to him in such a way. “Of course, Majesty,” the commander said. Wendell watched the man walk stiffly back to his chair as if someone had left a tent peg sticking out of the ground, and he’d sat right on it. The commander took his seat, his face red, his expression strained.
“You cannot be serious, Ellemont,” Lyla said, something like fear in her voice, “this … this man has come into your castle and insulted you, insulted all of us. He must be punished for his insolence.”
Ellemont’s face twisted with anger, and he slammed his hand down on the table, the queen jumping in fear, her eyes going wider than the general’s had. She stared at Ellemont in shock as if looking at a complete stranger. “Not another word about it, Lyla,” he said, “I am king here, not you. As you said, it is my castle and I, at least, am not offended.”
