Heading north and west, sticking to the country tracks, we pushed hard that first day. When the big drays could run no more we walked them, frequently glancing back, aware that there might be pursuit. We saw none. I wanted news but those few people we did encounter either ran when they saw us or had none. There were no traders on the road. War kills trade, and barbarians who prey on traders kill or steal from them as well as discouraging others to move goods. When trade dries up economies falter, production slows and dies, communities rely on their own skills and make what they need. If the situation persists civilizations fall into barbarism, travel and trade cease, quality goods are no longer fabricated for want of a market for them. A generation later and old people talk about peace and prosperity while young people listen and don't believe them. Our enemy wanted to barbarize the world, to make everyone poor, we wanted to civilize it and make everyone rich. I knew where the right lay, knew what ought to be, but could not find a comprehensive justification for enforcing it; 'life is better for you our way' just was not enough of an argument. Not that I thought our system was perfect; we took and controlled only sporadically over the centuries, giving up lands we controlled when a patron let them go for whatever reason. Client kingdoms could be and had been left in a patron's will to a foreign power as return for some favor done. The client kingdom rarely did as well under that rule. Some won their freedom in war against a patron and he was not dynamic or strong enough to take it back without aid and no other patron desired to help. A century later it might be taken again, or not. The Prashuli, Orduli and Alendi had once been clients and now were not; when we crushed them and ruined the north they might be again, or they might be looted, depopulated and left to their own devises. Weakened, other tribes from the east and west would move into the vacant territory to use it for their own and enslave or displace the current populations. It would be better if we had a stronger system of development and control, but that would be in the hands of government and we did not much approve of government, recognizing it as a necessary evil but keeping it to a minimum. The assembly of patrons split the powers of state between themselves in several magistracies and changed magistrates every year to avoid power being consolidated by one or few men. The two consuls were only the two senior magistrates, and the senior consul usually prosecuted a war, either punitive or of conquest, in order to line his own pockets with loot. That money was spent in the city and filtered down, even moving back to whence it came over time and aiding the conquered people. The council raised taxes from the conquered state, built roads, founded institutions, enforced the peace, allowed trade, and so on. The people prospered under those conditions and life was almost certainly better under our rule. Life is better for the common man under the light touch of our rule, but was that justification enough for it? I shrugged the matter off and turned my mind to other thoughts as we rode on. Sapphire was not a talkative companion.
The whining and growling of dogs echoed in my head, the sound vibrating through my skull from the stone set in my forehead. I wondered if I would wear that stone for the rest of my life, allowing anyone who attuned a stone to it to find me no matter where I was. It occurred to me that if they were allies it would be no bad thing, but enemies could track me that way and so far only enemies had. I wondered what the Turned were doing; had Lentro spoken to the others? Had they heard him and were they now outraged and fighting the control that the last king's amulet had over them? Were they plotting and scheming to bring down the one who wore it? Had Kukran been burned to ash already or had whoever made the attempt failed? I put that thought aside as well. Whatever happened would happen and we would hear word of it in time.
Fields of hops, barley and wheat thinned to smaller and smaller patches, the country becoming wilder. We passed meadows empty of livestock and villages empty of people, both man and animal either slaughtered or fled.
In the first empty village we entered, Sapphire had reined in and slid easily off his horse, the wound in his arm not seeming to give him much trouble. I could not see it but guessed he had cleaned and bound it. No blood showed through to his coat, at least, and in any case it was his arm, not mine.
“What?” I asked him.
He pulled down the pack he had tied to his horse and began loosening the ties.
“Time to change,” he said.
I thought about it and nodded. “You speak Gerrian?”
He nodded and began pulling clothes from the pack, the kind of rough spun cloth that they wear in the north, where they cannot afford to trade for our superior materials and colors. Yellows, blues, dark reds, wool and supple leather. I got down and we changed, picking clothes that fit where possible, making do where they did not. I took a slug of whiskey, put the bottle carefully away.
“You don't look like one of us,” he said in the Alendi dialect.
“My mother was a slave but my father was a warrior who stole her from the south.”
“What is your name?”
“Pel Epmeran,” I said without pause.
He snorted. “The son of a slave.”
I smiled back. “The son of a freedman. Stay in character.”
“Tarl Epjarn,” he supplied. “You are giving me lessons now?”
I didn't answer but instead looked around the ruin of a village; seeing what I wanted I went and got two stout sticks the length of swords. “Speaking of lessons, ours should continue.”
“I watched you, you have the way of it.”
“I could be better.”
“We could all be better, there is always someone better. That's never the point. Just be aware, know, think, act, don't pay attention to the skill of the enemy, only know him and kill him and move on.”
“Train me.”
He started repacking and I didn't think he would say more, I thought the answer was no, but it was more complicated than that. “They took me when I was five,” he started his story as he slung the pack up on the horse and tied it there. “I was a gutter rat, a… what do you call it? A beggar. A thief. There were hundreds of us gutter rats preying on each other, starving, killing each other. We were free but no one wanted us. There was famine. I was surviving.” He swung up into the saddle. “Bring the toy swords.”
I blushed. It was the contempt he put into the words 'toy swords.' But I didn't protest. I just did as I was told. He was giving me something and I was determined to accept the gift.
“I'd already killed, twice, by then; older boys who tried to take food I'd suffered to get. I wasn't alone. There was civil war. There was famine. There were thousands of people in Opreth and every one of them was hungry to one extent or another. The enemy had hit us while we fought amongst ourselves and the countryside was ruled by nomads. They didn't want the cities. They were killing everyone outside them so more refugees were arriving every day. Like a thousand rats in a barrel we were turning on ourselves.”
We rode out of the village and I listened, enthralled. I had heard of Opreth. I knew what had happened in the country of Fortherria, far to the north and east, a land once as civilized as ours. Not now. The cities were ruins. The country ruled by nomads who let fertile lands lie fallow and ran cattle on them. The cities were near empty, I had read, thinly populated by wretches who farmed market gardens inside the city walls. In Opreth a population of half a million had reduced itself to less than a handful of thousands. Gang wars, starvation, cannibalism, they had literally consumed themselves while the nomads killed any who fled the nightmare. They were still there, those few thousands in their cities that the barbarians mostly ignored.
“The noble line of the nomads have a few traditions they maintain. Ku Mirt is one of them. They came into the cities and took some of us. They begin training at five, or thereabouts. They are not too fussy about age so long as the boys look five or so.”
For a good while, as we walked the horses, he was silent but I didn't say anything. I sensed he would tell me more as long as I left him to decide what he would tell.
“Food is the reward, and we were all hungry. A thousand of us went into Yurpron Fastness. They trained us hard and some died of the training, but the survivors killed the rest. Over twelve years I killed roughly a hundred of them. Maybe more. I didn't count. The competition to survive was fierce. We were told early that only twenty would leave there alive when we reached seventeen. That we would then serve the royal house as tools well made.” He glanced at me then and just a glimpse of those cold blue eyes told me what he was saying this for.
He had asked me once. 'Are you five?' And when I had said no he had told me, 'We begin training at five. No exceptions.' No exceptions.
“I can't teach you to be what I am,” he put it into words where none were needed. “I killed children when I was a child, boys when I was a boy and youths when I was a youth, and some of the teachers along the way. And every day the training; morning noon and night, training in ways you don't want to imagine and in things you would rather not know about, so no. No, I can't teach you to be me. And would not if I could. But I will teach you a little more of the sword, if you want to learn that.” And then he kicked his horse into a canter and after a long moment I followed.