A Sellsword's Resolve Read online

  All of the men were silent, glancing around at each other as if wanting someone else to answer but no one did. “No?” Aaron said, “no one? Then what is it? You, Bastion,” he said, glancing where the giant youth stood studying his feet, an ashamed expression on his face. “What about you?”

  “S-sir?” The youth asked.

  “I want you,” Aaron said, forcing himself to remain patient, “to explain to me why it is that after two weeks of training, you’re all still walking around the woods like you’re on a holiday.”

  “Sir,” the youth said, “I guess … maybe, we’re not used to fighting this way. Sneaking up on folks in the dark and all … well, it seems sort of … dishonorable, I guess.”

  Aaron studied the man for a moment then glanced around at the others, “Is that right?” He said, “Does it seen dishonorable to you all as well?”

  There were sullen murmurs of agreement as the men nodded their heads in support. Aaron let it go on for a moment then spoke, “Adney. Tell me, what happens to little Fran and Sarah if you end up dying? How, do you suppose, they’re going to have food enough to eat?”

  “Sir?” Adney asked, “I don’t—”

  “What about you, Gerald?” Aaron went on. “That wife of yours. Think she’ll do okay without you at home?”

  Gerald let out a nervous laugh, “Sir, forgive me, might be she’d be happy enough at the news.”

  “Aye, that she would,” someone shouted, “but I’ll keep her bed warm for you, Gerald, you can count on that.” The men broke out in laughter then, but not Wendell standing at his side or the youth, Bastion, who was watching Aaron’s expression growing darker with each moment.

  “That’s funny,” Aaron said, and the men grinned, glad to have him in on the joke. “Real funny. You know what I think’s funnier though?” He said, smiling.

  “What’s that, sir?” The man who’d spoken asked.

  Aaron let his smile fall. “Watching dead men laugh.”

  The laughter cut off abruptly, and Aaron glanced around at the men. “What? You don’t want to laugh anymore, is that it? Not funny anymore? No, go on laugh. And as for being honorable,” he said, turning to Bastion, “well, I guess you can tell Salen all about it while he leads you across the Fields of the Dead. From what I hear, the god’s not much of a conversationalist but, hey, what do I know?”

  “General, sir,” The youth stammered, “I didn’t mean—”

  “Never mind what you meant,” Aaron said. “What you men don’t seem to understand is that Belgarin’s men will be here. Soon. And the men that come will come to kill not just you but your families. They will come and kill any who oppose them. Do you understand? And if you’re not ready—if we’re not ready—all the jokes and laughter in the world won’t save us. There’s nothing honorable about leaving your wife without a husband or your children without a father, and it’s my job to keep that from happening.”

  “When they come, these men, you kill them however you can. If you can drop a boulder on ten of them, if you can catch one of them pissing or shitting and slit his throat for him, then fucking do it, because that’s one less man, one less chance that you don’t go home to your families. When the fighting starts, either chivalry dies, or you die. Your choice.”

  “We ain’t murderers,” one man muttered sullenly, “we’re soldiers. Not criminals.”

  “No, you aren’t murderers,” Aaron said, meeting the man’s eyes, “I can see that well enough. The ones the murderers practice on, maybe. You men need to stop and think about why you’re here. You tell me you’re not criminals, what I’m hearing is that you’re not survivors. You understand me? Say what you want to about criminals—they know how to survive. Now, I tell you what. How about we discuss this more on our jog back to the city.”

  “Jog, sir?” One of the men asked, his voice incredulous.

  “That’s right,” Aaron said, “let’s go.” They were up and jogging then, each of them struggling to put one foot in front of the other, weary from three days and nights spent in the woods in the mock battle. Aaron was weary too and wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep for a week, but he forced himself to keep pace in the front, concentrated on the breath coming in and out of his lungs as they began the two-hour run back to Perennia.

  You were awful hard on them, Co said into his mind.

  Aaron glanced at the men jogging beside him, their faces set in grim expressions as they forced their weary bodies forward. Two hundred of what Wendell said were the best of them. The most clever, the best fighters. If this was the best Perennia had to offer, then gods help them all. Too hard on them? He thought back, no, firefly. Life’s hard—it’s dying that’s easy.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She sat on the porch in the chair her husband, Franklin, had given her so long ago. Franklin had been gone for ten years, but the chair was nearly as good as the day he made it, and she rocked back and forth, watching the boy, humming a quiet tune to herself as she did.

  The boy’s hands were grubby and dirty from digging in the yard, creating a trench for his toy soldiers to fight over, maybe. She smiled, but it was a sad one. It seemed to her that boys started playing at war just about as soon as they could walk, and they never really stopped. The difference was that the wars of children left dirt and laundry to be done where those of men left blood and ashes. There was a little shovel she used to garden from time to time in the shack out behind the house, and she thought of telling him to get it, thinking maybe the shovel would keep him from getting quite so filthy, might even save the trousers and shirt before it was too late, but she stayed silent. Sometimes a body had to get their hands dirty to get a job done, that was all. She’d learned that at a young age, and she’d not forgotten it.

  Besides, she was loath to take the boy’s fun from him. The gods hadn’t been kind to him, she knew, his mother and father murdered when he was barely more than a babe. The only person left to him in the world a dried up old woman whose hands were steadily growing into claws from the stiffening sickness and who could tell when it was going to rain by the ache of her knees in the morning.

  She heard them coming before she saw them, half a dozen men, maybe more, the rattle of their chain mail and the swords in their scabbards loud in the near silence. The early morning sun shone bright in a cloudless sky, its light cutting through the trees surrounding her home, spilling onto the ground in golden patches, and the wind was cool and sweet against her skin. A good day for it, if any day could be. And despite what she’d expected—no, old woman, don’t kid yourself. You knew what was coming, as sure as you knew anything, you knew that—she found herself growing afraid, saw the cup of tea trembling in her hands. She thought of Hannah, her daughter, of how the boy looked so much like her, then she pushed the thought away, wiping a withered hand across her tired, moist eyes.

  She looked at the cup again, at the hands holding it. She watched them tremble for a minute, studied the wrinkled, stick-thin fingers, once so sure and deft, now old and frail. Then she sighed and sat her cup down on the table. The woods around their small secluded cabin grew quiet, no birds chirping, no squirrels chattering in the trees. It was as if they knew what was coming, as if they’d been waiting for it. And why not? She’d known, hadn’t she? As for waiting … well, it seemed like she’d been doing that just about all her life.

  “There’s still time,” a familiar voice says, “You know there is.”

  She considered it, not for herself, though. The truth was, she was tired, seemed like it was all she ever was. Went to bed tired and woke up tired. Tired of all the memories, of all the ghosts where her family had once been, tired of looking over her shoulder, of getting out of bed each morning and wondering if today was the day. But, mostly, she was tired of waiting. Still, she did consider it. For the boy. He’d be alone without her. Such a small little thing and the world such a big place. Big and cruel, like a bull gone mad from pain.

  She’d seen one, once. A big draft steer her husband had named
Palder. She thought it a might presumptuous of a name for an animal spent its days pulling a till across fields but, then, Franklin had loved that steer, and it had seemed, to her at least, that the steer had loved him. Right up until it got bit by some coyote wandered on the property. Franklin chased the thing off with a torch, and they’d seen to the bite as best they could but that didn’t stop it from becoming infected. A few nights later, Franklin went out to check on him only to have Palder, the thing he loved more than anything else in the world save her—and sometimes she’d wondered about that one—come charging at him with violence on his mind. Franklin had made it out and over the fence, but not before the mad, thrashing steer got in a good stomp on his knee.

  He never did walk the same after that, and she remembered kneeling in the darkness wondering how she was going to get her screaming man up to the house with a leg that was clearly broken. And, the whole time she was doing it, that damned steer was ramming into the fence over and over again until it was bleeding across the face and still didn’t stop. Just kept right on trying to get through, mad with the need for it, deciding maybe that it was either the fence or him, not stopping no matter how much she yelled or screamed, not stopping until she grabbed a crossbow from the shack and put a bolt through its heart.

  The world, Beth figured, was a lot like that bull. All bent on destroying, not much caring what it was it destroyed just so long as it did. A world that made a mockery of things like love and trust, a place that thought the only answer to any question was blood and more of it.

  “You can’t think that way. It’s not all bad, anyway.”

  “No,” she said, laying her head back and closing her eyes for a moment, feeling the sun on her face, “not all bad. But what ain’t is spoilin’ in a hurry.”

  She sighed, rubbed at her knee where a cold ache was beginning to settle as she stared up at the clear sky. “There’s a storm acomin’, I reckon.”

  “It’s been coming for a long time now. But there’s still time, just a little. We can get out; we can run. You and me and the boy.”

  Beth sighed again, shaking her head, “And what then? Run for the rest of our lives? Run until that’s the only thing the boy knows? Never how to stick, only how to run? I did it with Hannah, and how’d that turn out? Franklin told me we ought to stick, but no I insisted we run and so we did, and now she’s dead and gone. So’s he, and I’m still here. Lingerin’.

  “You would have died.”

  She nodded but did not speak.

  “Please,” the voice said, desperate now, “there’s still time.”

  “You know there’s not,” she said. She considered taking another drink of tea, looked at her trembling hands, and decided against it. “Anyway, I couldn’t carry him. Once, maybe, but not now. It’s just about all I can do to carry myself, these days. Besides, could be we’re wrong. Could be something altogether different.”

  “We’re not wrong.”

  “Yeah. I know it. Still. Could be.”

  The approaching sounds faded for a few minutes, enough so that she could almost convince herself that they’d never really been there at all but, soon, they were back, louder than ever, the clank of armor, and the nickering of horses. They’d gone around the bend where the road curved, then. Another five minutes, no more than that, and they’d be in sight. “Michael, honey,” she called, “why don’t you go on in the house and wash up? Be time for lunch ‘for long.”

  The boy turned from his mock battle, an earnest look of concentration on his face. “Aw, nanna, do I have to? I was just gettin’ to the best part.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’d better.”

  The boy sighed, a world of wishing in it, but he got up and walked to the porch, kissing her on the cheek. “Okay, Nanna. I love you.”

  “And I love you,” she said, watching him walk in the house. A good boy. Despite everything else, a good boy, and she was proud to have been a part of that. “Well,” she said once he was gone, “Why don’t you come on out for a spell? I think maybe I’d see you one last time.”

  She felt some of the warmth leave her body, felt the aches of old age settling deeper as the glowing yellow orb coalesced in front of her. It swayed back and forth sporadically, the yellow light of it shifting and swirling.

  “My, but ain’t we a fidgety thing today?”

  “Of course I am. You know why. You know what they’ll do.”

  “Yeah. Well, I expect I do. What are you worryin’ yourself for anyway? Ain’t as if they can kill ya.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

  She smiled widely then, and the smile transformed her wizened face, setting back, for a moment, the ravages of time, showing the girl she’d once been. “Well. You’re a good one, Davin. Been a pleasure to know ya.”

  “The pleasure’s been mine, ma’am.” The voice said, sad now, bordering on desperate.

  She laughed, “Ma’am, is it? Well, ‘spose I’m old enough, anyway.” She thought she caught the shimmer of something metallic through the trees, and her laughter faded. “Alright, then. Reckon you’d better make yourself scarce, just now. Might be we can fool ‘em.”

  The orb vanished, and she felt the warmth fill her body once more, pushing back some of the aches and pains of old age. “We can’t.”

  She didn’t have an answer for that, so she stayed silent, watching as the first of the soldiers appeared on the path leading up to her house, twelve of them, all on horses, their helmets obscuring their features. It could have been anyone there, beneath that metal, anyone or no one. Behind the twelve rode a thin man, so thin as to appear almost sickly. His face, too, was thin, and coupled with his pale skin it gave him the look of a corpse. A jagged, puckered scar started below his left eye and ran diagonally across his face, ending at the underside of his right jaw.

  Riding on his large war horse, the man looked like some dying pilgrim suffering from starvation and depravation. He smiled as he approached, but there was no humor in it, and the expression looked strange and unnatural on that wasted face. There were dark circles under his eyes, but it was the eyes themselves that caught her attention; there was madness there, she thought, and again she found herself reminded of her husband’s bull. Palder had much the same look in his eyes before the crossbow bolt struck home. Somehow, she didn’t think this would prove that easy.

  The man rode to within a few feet of the porch and then waited, silently, as the others fanned out in the yard, two circling around to the back of her small house. He seemed to expect Beth to break the silence, but she did not. If waiting was what was required, she would wait. She’d had a lot of practice at it, over the years.

  They sat in silence that way, regarding each other for several moments. Finally, the man’s face twitched irritably, and his smile faded. “Hello, mother. You’re well, I hope?”

  Beth shrugged, “Bout as well as one of my age can expect, I ‘spose. Now how about you tell me what matter brings men with swords and crossbows to an old woman’s door, disturbing her rest?”

  The man smiled again, and despite herself, Beth felt a shiver of fear run through her. There was something not quite human, she thought, about that smile. “Oh, not so old as that, I think, and I believe you know well enough why I’m here.”

  Beth shrugged, “Can’t say as I do, stranger. We don’t get many folks up in these parts. Pretty far away from the cities with their wars and their soldiers all dressed up and looking for somethin’ to poke. Anyhow, I ain’t got much, but if it’s a meal you’re after, I reckon I might be able to feed all of ya, just so long as you aren’t countin’ on seconds. If you’re here for anythin’ else, to steal an old woman’s virtue, maybe, I have to tell you that ship sailed a long time ago, and it weren’t no great matter when it did.” She cackled at that, thinking maybe it would be alright, after all. Hard, sure, but she’d lived a long time, and she’d seen hard, had dealt with it before. Buried a husband, a daughter too. Yeah, her and hard were old … well, not friends, maybe, but acquaintanc
es, that was certain.

  The man’s smile widened, “Did you say ‘we?’”

  She cursed herself inwardly, gods but she was an old fool. No reason to draw attention to the boy; still, it would be alright, she thought. The boy had nothing they wanted, nothing they could want. “Just me and my grandson is all. His mother died shortly after he was born. Caught the fever, if you’d believe it.”

  “No,” he said, the smile still there. And gods but it’s a cold thing. “No, I don’t think I do.”

  She shrugged as if it made no difference one way or the other, reaching for her cup of tea once more. “Well, that’s as may be,” she said, proud of the calmness in her voice, though she wasn’t able to keep her hand from trembling as she took a sip of the tea. Luke warm now and mostly tasteless, but it was something to do, something to hold on to.

  The man watched her, his grin widening as he motioned to someone she couldn’t see. She turned and felt her heart gallop in her chest, an old, worn out horse who’d thought its racing days long done. Two of the armored men walked around from the side of the house, each of them holding one of her grandson’s arms the way guards might drag a condemned man to his execution.

  “Nanna?” The boy asked, his little chubby features trembling, on the verge of tears.

  “It’s alright, baby,” she said, forcing down the tremor in her voice, “everything’s okay.”

  “Sure it is,” the man said, smiling at her wider than ever before kneeling down and looking at the boy, “Michael, isn’t it? Come here, Michael. Why don’t you come visit your uncle Aster.”

  The madness was in the man’s eyes again, not dancing beneath the surface this time, but showing itself in full, and Beth felt a shiver of terror run up her spine. “No,” she said, up and out of her rocker before she realized it. “You just stay, honey. Ain’t no need for you to be comin’ over here.” She turned back to the man, Aster, her heart racing in her chest, the first real fear coming on now, tearing at her with small, cruel claws. “Please,” she said, hating the sound of her voice breaking but unable to stop it, “Leave him be. He’s just a child; he’s got no business with you.”