They rise with the sun, as planned; the room’s lone window faces east, and they left its wooden shutters thrown back for an early start. There are no glass panes here, only the old oiled caul of a horse, tacked down tight to keep out the damp and chill. Morning light stains the room a dreary yellow-brown.

  Rodrigo stirs, but remains in place until Arnu and Dieste have quit the cramped straw bed the three of them shared for the night. His other four retainers have taken places about the floor, with such coats, blankets, or other padding as they could contrive. The newest of them has learned by now the soldier’s trick of sleeping back-to-back on a cold night—and the night was cold. Even blankets would be little help against the floor, hard wood and uneven to boot.

  They groan only a little as they rise. A peer’s men could ask for better, but a peer’s men do not complain. His title might likewise have evicted other travelers from their rooms—their host made the offer—if courtesy, prudence, and economy had not argued against it. They did not come so far to make enemies, or to be separated if enemies came.

  Rodrigo tells them off as soon as they are decent, a task to every man. One to rouse the ostler and pack the mules, another to see to breakfast. Two more to the livery stable across the street, to fetch and saddle their own horses. Dieste earns the honor of attending on Fernande in the courtyard, leaving old Arnu to care for their lord himself.

  He dresses with care. He is not yet thirty, and still vain, and sees no reason to be otherwise. When a basin of cold water arrives from the pump, he clenches his teeth and bathes his entire body. There were surely vermin in the bed, and moreover his hair is in a poor state. Arnu gives his master’s mustache and beard a brief brush-and-trim before braiding the back into its customary dark plait with blue and scarlet ribbons.

  His good shirt and breeches were hung from the joists of the ceiling overnight, and need no inspection. Over both goes a tunic of heavy buff leather, then the cuirass. This last is solid steel, and quite old; the rampant gryphon incised into the front dates it to times when monsters were a fantasy. There is a dent in the right flank, from an ancient pistol-shot, which fortunately will not show under his coat.

  The coat is in an old style, but quite new; its luxurious red velvet spent many years on an enormous heirloom divan, sheltered from the sun in a forgotten back room until the present need. Its buttons are real gold, salvaged after its predecessor was torn in half. Last come his riding-boots, knee-length with steel plate greaves fastened to their fronts, and his gloves, and his broad-rimmed hat with its hidden steel frame. Arnu assures him that he looks splendid, but the man could hardly say otherwise, and the room has no mirror. Splendid or not, Rodrigo is at least no longer cold.

  Breakfast is warm bread from the baker down the street, spread with goat cheese and pickles, all washed down with thin beer. Rodrigo eats it standing while Arnu buckles on his sword and pistols. As he swallows the last bite he hears the horses coming into the courtyard, neighing and bucking at the sight and smell of Fernande after a night’s reprieve. All is ready, then, or near enough. One task remains.

  The morning’s opening ritual is not a very old one, but all the more important for that. First Rodrigo invokes the name of Neisu, Who watches all roads, and calls down His blessing for the day. Then he takes his place beside Fernande’s head, and draws his saber, holding it blade-down with both hands. The men line up by seniority and approach, one at a time, to kiss the stone on the pommel. When he has thus renewed his oath to Lord, King, and Convention, each man pins his dewrose to the left breast of his coat. Rodrigo attaches his last of all, after kissing the stone himself. His rose is pure silver; the men’s are all tin, though finely worked. The folk they go to visit this day are unlikely to notice the difference.

  He has already seen that Fernande is well-dressed; Dieste knows his business. The saddle is tight, but not too tight, on his brother’s back, and his breastplate gleams. It is engraved with a large dewrose, with a sapphire “dewdrop” in its center. His plumage underneath is neat and ordered, from the vivid blue of his head and neck to the bright green of his tail. He is almost too beautiful to be frightening.

  “You are well?” Rodrigo asks him quietly, while the men have their own breakfast and finish their preparations. The giant head bobs. “I paid the ostler to bring you a whole pig last night, and two goats for this morning. I hope you got it all?” Another nod. “Was it enough?” Fernande considers, then slowly shakes his head. “Glutton.” A formidable jaw drops down, a smile full of long sharp teeth.

  “Dieste,” he says, more loudly, and holds out his hand for the bit and bridle. Fernande bows his obeisance, spreading his wings and lowering his head so his brother and lord can slip the hateful thing into place. Rodrigo has never had cause to use it, and earnestly prays he never will. He is not sure he is even strong enough to control his younger brother, if the need arose. All the same, it is needful, as a courtesy to others. Fernande would never suffer it from any other man.

  The casque or chanfron—its forehead stamped with their family’s arms, and another blue stone—goes on over the bridle, and Fernande, too, is ready for the day’s ride. Rodrigo takes one last moment to survey his men, all mounted now. Their appearance is … tolerable. Not uniform, sadly. Arnu and Dieste bear plate under faded coats. The other four have only padded armor, and dun cloth over it. No two helmets match precisely. Reasonable protection, but not as splendid as he might have hoped. Appearances will matter today, in more ways than one. At least their horses are vigorous; the Republic has grass and oats to spare.

  Every one of them bears sword and pistols, plus the one item on which the Convention refused to economize: a new repeating carbine, machine-bored with a fifteen-round magazine. At Rodrigo’s nod, Arnu takes the lead out of the courtyard, followed by the newest of the men—Palenio, that was his name—who wants for instruction in fieldcraft. Rodrigo jumps easily onto his brother’s back, and follows. Two of the others fall into place behind him; as they clear the inn’s gate one of them trades a small coin to the ostler for their string of six loaded mules. Rodrigo assumes, for lack of word to the contrary, that the seals on their packs were intact, and they have not been plundered in the night. Dieste brings up the rear, behind the mules, with their last companion.

  The town is still waking up, its laborers trudging out of the gates to their fields for the day’s work. They are far enough from coast and railroad here that nothing had properly modernized by the time of the Blemish; nearly every building is wood. The ancient stone inn they just left is one exception, perched at the crossroads where the town began. A few others—the bakery, the brewer, the smithy, the kiln—are brickwork, mostly very old but with signs of more recent repair. The watchtower in the center of town (also brick) is the only truly new construction in sight.

  The town’s walls are an a much older style: packed earth heaped up behind the deep trench it was dug out of, all topped with a wooden palisade. Not enough to stop a determined attack, but sufficient to slow it down, and discourage casual depredations. A trumpet sounds from the tower as they clear the gates, and Rodrigo and his men lift hats and helmets to return the salute. He is not their lord, but appreciates the courtesy.

  The road ahead is long and uneven, and unpaved past the first hundred feet; by noon they will be up in the hills, and wherever they sleep tonight will be less comfortable than the inn. Where a stream crosses the path, they ford it, the nearest good bridge being a mile downstream in a far larger town. They have ridden two days to get this far, to the edge of the Republic and perhaps an inch beyond it. There is no proper map for their destination, just a set of directions based on rumor and recollection. Their host assured them last night that they were unlikely to get lost; there are few destinations ahead, and so few branches or crossings in the trail. The chief danger (where navigation is concerned) is that the way will have vanished from disuse.

  They will be some hours on the trail. Three of his six retainers, though sworn to die in his service if need be, are new recruits, virtual strangers. He spent the last two days committing their names to his memory, and gathering as many details as he could without being obvious. He knows where each was born, and who is his kin. Today, he will learn more.

  At the rear of the line Dieste takes out his flute, and strikes up “The Crossing of Vustol.” The man with him—Yossim, the Dundanite—sings along softly, sparing his voice. There will be time for many songs on this road. Rodrigo turns to the retainer immediately behind him, for want of other company. “Milao. Your family comes from this region, don’t they?”

  He certainly looks it; his hair is red under his old kettle-hat, his cheeks freckled and fair. But he shakes his head. “No, Lord. Fifty miles south. My grandfather left Carzo Muth at the turn of the century, after the famine.”

  Rodrigo tries not to wince. “I’m afraid I don’t know these hills as well as I should,” he says, and wishes he could call the words back when he hears them. He needs to sound stronger, for the men.

  Milao shrugs. “I don’t know them either, Lord. I have never been here in my life.”

  “But you speak the language?”

  “Some. My parents spoke Tusam at home, and to me, before I left. I haven’t had cause to use it in years.”

  Rodrigo is not surprised. He does not know, and dares not ask, if his guardsman was given the Siocene name Milao, or if chose it for himself when he came of age. He knows the boy for a farrier’s son—another useful skill to have along on this trip—and that he worked as a ranch-hand for some years before signing up for service. One of Arnu’s picks, like most of his retinue. Rodrigo chose him for his place in line on purpose, so everyone could see their peer did not care if a man of Boghen blood rode directly behind him with a loaded gun. “See if you can refresh your memory, my man. It could save our lives.”

  “Yes, Lord,” he says, and the kettle-hat bobs. Rodrigo is just turning to face the trail when he adds, “The dialect here might be very different, though.”

  Rodrigo whips his head back around. “Only fifty miles away?”

  “Fifty miles as the crow flies, Lord. The hills add distance, in more ways than one. And the … the folk who emigrated, they had their own speech. As they had their own lives. My mother tells me they made new words, for new sights and new places. I don’t know if I will understand these people or not. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”

  Now it is Rodrigo’s turn to shrug. “You’ll understand them better than I do, at least. I’m glad to have you along, and in my service.” The words sound stiff, and insincere. There are better things he could say, but he cannot speak softly while they ride in file. Later, perhaps, when they rest, he will take Milao aside, and ask him about the life of Boghen folk in the lowlands. He might invite Arnu to the discussion as well, though the old man’s kin were half-breed poachers, and half the Tusam he knows is unfit for polite company.

  But Milao has given him something to think about as he rides. Milao’s grandfather left these hills a long time ago, before the Blemish. His son must have been born in the lowlands. It was only natural he raised that boy to know their native tongue—but the son found a wife who spoke it too, or a form of it. And so did their own boy, more than seventy years removed from the highlands. A Siocene dialect, maybe, which troubles him too, though he would never say it to these men. A peer does not like to think of his people holding on to foreign speech, even in private. Like shoals under the water, a hidden danger, this living memory that all of Siocaea was once Syoshen Vukh.

  The men they are going to see will think the same, or worse. Their fathers raised them on tales of how invaders from the south drove them off the fertile plains to chase goats around the rocks. If they have forgotten those stories, Eyanna Vogh will be on hand to remind them, soon enough. Like as not, the pirate queen owns them already. Rodrigo has only a brace of Boghen retainers (and one of them a mongrel) to set against her persuasions. It won’t be nearly enough.

  But then, it was never meant to be. The Convention has no expectation that Rodrigo will win the sympathies or interest of even a single Boghen on this trip. He will certainly make the attempt, and if he does, the Dewrose Republic will be that much stronger for his efforts. If he does not … there are plans for that contingency as well.

  Soon they are in forest, not true old woods but the meager growth of land left untended for a mere generation or two. Rodrigo has seen such shabby stands closer to home. The trees here have not yet grown to a height to kill the undergrowth, and the undergrowth is not thick enough to hide the odd trace of human life—a rotted fence covered in vines, a roofless stone cottage with leafy branches thrusting out of every window. It is the middle of spring now, and green growth blurs every sharp edge. Were it midwinter instead, they could peer fifty years back in time.

  They stop to eat and rest sometime after noon, by the edge of a gurgling stony brook festooned with ferns and damp moss. Arnu has been tracking their progress against their tenuous list of landmarks, and feels certain that they are on course and on schedule. So they let the beasts pick through the scrub unburdened on a quest for the relicts of ancient farms; they have enough for the nosebags to see them through the day, in any case. Fernande disappears into the woods to find his own meal. Rodrigo assumes he won’t take anything anyone will miss. They are hours out from the village still, and any pigs or goats he finds will be feral.

  Dieste shares a postprandial pipe with Yossim as they keep watch. Sandro and Palenio spar with fallen branches like much younger boys, counting touches and fetching new “swords” each time an old blade explodes in rotten splinters. It is foolish, and dirties their coats, but it will stretch their legs as well. Rodrigo takes Milao and Arnu aside for the planned talk, only to find his right-hand man distracted, following his horse with his eyes instead of the conversation. At length he asks him to explain himself.

  “I trained that old girl myself,” he says. “She’s fourteen years old, and cleverer’n me. Never had a beast with a better nose for Blemish. She’s done that twitch five, six times now. Something’s near.” Milao reaches for his pistol, only to have Arnu seize his hand with a shake of his head. “Not that close, lad, or all the beasts would spook. No, it’s just something queer.”

  “Could she be scenting Fernande?”

  “No, she knows your brother well enough. She wouldn’t trouble over him. Might I take the lads to see, Lord?”

  Rodrigo eyes the sun, well past the zenith now. But Arnu can see that as well as himself. He wouldn’t ask if it he didn’t think it worth the lost time. “Milao, and our brave swordsmen there? Very well. Yossim and Dieste can mind the packs.”

  “And you, Lord?” Arnu raises an eyebrow.

  Rodrigo sees his point; it would be good for him to see how the new three perform, and perhaps learn something of field-work himself. He is not nearly finished learning from Arnu. “Yes, of course. It’s not as if I am doing anything here. Lead the way.” The timing is excellent; Sandro and Palenio are running low on sticks to break, and disputing over points besides. Rodrigo breaks up the quarrel mid-brew while Arnu catches his steed and murmurs commands her ear.

  The mare leads them up the trail a short distance, then off to one side, into a deep growth of hardy scrub clinging to the edge of a precipice. Then, she halts, and Arnu steps carefully forward to the cliff’s edge. Then, he whistles. “Aye, there it is. Come on, lads, the rock is steady. But mind your feet.”

  Together, they look down, and see a scattered mess of white bones strewn over the slope below. It’s steep, but not sheer, and parts lay here and there where they have tumbled from the actions of beast and weather. Rodrigo sees the dome of a skull, man-sized, wedged in the base of a sapling tree where it forks out from the hillside. Its spine trails down intact, but the rest has been torn away; a piece like a shoulder-blade is some ten feet down, and the pelvis farther still. He thinks it is only one man’s body, but he can’t be sure.

  While they are staring, Arnu stoops down to pick up something small at his feet. It vanishes into his closed fist before Rodrigo can see what it is, and the old poacher straightens up at once. “Right, then. You.” He thumps Palenio on the arm. “This is your schooling. Get down there, and tell me what you make of it.”

  Palenio eyes the slope, then the bones, and looks to his lord for confirmation. Rodrigo looks back in silence, resting his hand easily on the hilt of his sword. He has no idea what the man might find among the bare bones, but is perfectly happy to let Palenio manage the slope to satisfy their curiosity. “Go on, lad,” Arnu chides. “My old knees won’t take such use. You were bounding around like a billy-goat not an hour past. You won’t catch the Blemish off old dry bones, and time’s wasting while you dally.”

  Seeing no alternative, the guardsman takes one step down the slope, then another, holding bushes or trees. “Don’t trust those roots too far,” Arnu advises. “Soil’s thin up here, and you’re a sight heavier than a sapling tree.” Palenio stiffens, but does not turn his head to glare. Rodrigo takes this for a positive reflection on his character.

  At length he reaches the first bone, picks it up, looks it over. Silently he sets it down, steps cautiously down to the next, then the next. Inside a minute he has seen them all, and squats on the slope, looking about himself helplessly. Arnu smiles, calls down: “All the same size, are they?” Palenio lifts a long bone, then a tiny piece the size of gravel. “That’ll be the wrist, or the ankle. Keep looking, my boy. Are they all from one creature?”

  “It looks like a man to me,” Rodrigo murmurs in his man’s ear. As Lord, he is privileged to speak the obvious; Milao and Sandro have been compelled to swallow their confusion.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Yes, a man,” Arnu replies, as Palenio roots through thin grass for more clues. “That is, of man-kind. We came seeking Blemish, found a normal man’s bones. Is that likely?”

  “A trace scent on an old kill?”

  “Fair guess—but wrong.” Palenio holds a new bone up to the light, a tiny curving thing. From this distance, it looks like a nail-paring. “Ah! Found something, have we?”

  Palenio looks at the bone. “There’s a lot of them here, this is just one. Most of them are broken. Is it a rib?”

  “Aye, it’s a rib. What creature?”

  The guardsman turns the bone over in his hands. “Some manner of bird? It’s light.”

  “Very light—but not a bird. Remember, we’re after Blemish. That bone is human too. It’ll be the baby’s.”

  Up at the brink, three sets of eyes turn to Arnu. Again, Rodrigo speaks for them. “A baby? Would a turned beast leave so much of an infant’s bones? From the size, it would be newborn.”

  “Indeed.” Arnu opens his hand, revealing a silver penny and another bit of bone. They lean over to stare, and see that it is not a bone but a human eyetooth. “I guessed it at a glance—but I had help. Come on up, lad, your test is done. You did well enough.”

  “Why is that one here?” Milao asks. “Did he lose a tooth on the way down?”

  Arnu snorts. “She. And it’s not hers. It’d be her husband’s, or mayhap her brother’s. Some other soul she was traveling with, before she came due on the trail.”

  Rodrigo looks from the coin and the tooth to the bones below. “She died in childbirth?”

  “Blemish,” Arnu reminds them again, sounding a touch weary for their slowness.

  Sandro sucks in a breath. “The babe was tainted.” Arnu smiles tightly, and passes him the penny for a prize, dropping the tooth in the dirt. “And then … “ He, too, looks down the slope. “They killed her. They killed them both.”

  “So they did,” Arnu says. “Drove her over the edge with babe in arms, to keep from touching skin or blood, and left them both to die in the wild. Then set a coin and an offering over the spot, to ward off the curse. A kind of magic, hoary old practice now—coin for the dead, a token of flesh for the Blemish so it won’t come seeking a whole man.” Palenio pauses halfway up, and looks back. “Don’t bother looking for sign on the child. Fur, feather, scales, all that’d wear away long since with the other flesh. The bones might be a touch off, depending when the dam caught it, but we’ve learned what we can from all this. Leave ‘em to rest now. We’ve places to be.”

  “Did you expect this?” Rodrigo asks him on their way back to camp. Palenio and Sandro are both preoccupied with whispered prayers for the dead as they walk; Milao only looks somber.

  “I expected something queer,” Arnu says, “and I found it.”

  “So the child was touched, but not the dam?” Milao wonders.

  “Nay, I expect she was too. Only a little, I think, at the early stage—a bit of beast’s hide in the armpits, maybe. No telling how she caught it. Tried to hide it, as they all do. But nothing’s so open to the Blemish as a babe in the womb, with the flesh still forming. The truth came out. As it will.”

  There is no more speech until they are packed and ready to set out. Then Milao asks, “How old were those bones, Arnu?”

  “Old. Stripped bare.” Arnu swings up atop his clever mare. “You’ll be thinking, ‘are the rest of that company still around in these woods?’ No?”

  “Something like that. If she was touched long enough to shape the babe, and traveling with her kin—“

  “Then how long did they have? Fair question, but ease yourself. They’re long gone, whatever came of them.”

  “How do you know?” says Palenio. Not in a challenging way. Only curious.

  “Were any of those bones broken?”

  Palenio shrugs. “A few of the smallest.”

  “There’s your answer, then. Man’s marrow is a damned fine treat, once you’re taken.”

  The day is nearly gone when they see the first promise of their journey’s end: deep gouges in the soil, scuff-marks on tree trunks, the odd spoor. Most of the boys have been around farms enough to know the portents of foraging swine, and give a soft cheer for the destruction. Shortly after the woods thin out, giving way to a brief swathe of stumps and coppices before failing entirely. Then they see only the bald green crowns of the hills themselves, lit up gold by the setting sun behind them.

  The grass is neatly trimmed, sheep’s work. The trail winds in a dusty ribbon around the nearest hill. Rodrigo spies the top of the watchtower, peering out over its summit from the next peak, shortly before he hears a horn calling the alarm. As they draw nearer, they hear panicked shouts, the barking of dogs, and a few screams from the women. The hillfolk have no way of knowing this little mounted band is not the vanguard of an army—or worse, foragers. This was expected, and Rodrigo dismounts and rummages through his saddlebags for a pure white flag. Waving it above his head, he proceeds on foot with one of the mules from the string, flanked by Arnu and Milao.

  The village—not a man in the lowlands knew its proper name—rests in a long, winding saddle of land between five hills. Most of it is taken up by tilled fields, which reach partway up the adjoining slopes. Rodrigo sees beans, oats, barley, and here and there a patch for roots or greens. The widest part is marked off by a ring of stone ten feet high, with a tall timber door and a tiny shed beside it, whose purpose he can guess all too well. He can see only the roofs of the houses inside the wall, behind a thicket of men’s heads and gun-barrels. The watchtower, atop the highest hill to their left, will have armed men as well.

  They are ordered to halt, in thickly accented Siocene, fifty paces from the gate. They comply, and after a moment the heavy wooden door swings back to release three men for a parley. One of them walks out briskly, the second limps slightly, and the third uses a cane; Rodrigo would guess the first and youngest is somewhere near fifty, the others at least ten years older. All are unarmed.

  As they draw closer, he sees that the cane-user bears a long braided strand of many-colored yarn in his free hand, and has a patterned skullcap on his head in place of the standard hood and short cape favored by the others. He is the village’s diviner, an indispensable authority found in every Boghen settlement. The other two might be locally important, but the diviner declares what is Nehm, and cannot be overruled.

  The youngest hails them with something unintelligible but plainly challenging in tone. “I am Rodrigo Femerrini BeMeserra, Veccian of Encelise and Peer of the Great Convention,” he answers evenly. “I come to treat with you on behalf of His Royal Highness Ciamo, the Third of that name. My companions number six. We intend you no harm, and will impose on your hospitality for but a single night. I bring you gifts as tokens of our goodwill,” he adds, drawing the mule forward a few paces.

  The three Boghmen blink, then startle as Arnu attempts a translation. Their eyes move back and forth as he speaks, from Rodrigo’s face to his escorts to the heavily loaded mule. As soon as he is done, the limping man voices their first concern. All three men are somewhat short, but he is the shortest, and has a pendulous goiter hanging from his throat. His complaint is brief, and Arnu translates it easily enough—with some polite paraphrasis, he suspects.

  Rodrigo was prepared for it. “My steed is completely turned, but not taken; he has a man’s mind still, and cannot spread the Blemish. He will of course remain outside your village overnight, and hunt for his own food. On that point, I must warn you that it will not be safe for any of your stock to roam outside your bounds while he is loose without me; I cannot guarantee that he will not attack anything large which moves in the dark.”

  This sets two of the three immediately at ease. The younger man briefly frowns, then relaxes. Rodrigo does not much care what he thinks, provided he thinks twice before sending any messengers out in the dark. They cannot stop these people from passing word of their visit to Eyanna Vogh; if they do not, and she hears of it, she will most likely flay a few of them alive for an example. All Rodrigo wants or expects is a fair head start.

  The old men have other complaints and objections, of course, but they are not too sheltered to understand that they have no real choice. Seven armed men and a turned beast stand at their doorstep, claiming royal authority. Refusal will lead to violence—now, later, or both. Still Rodrigo answers them patiently, giving them time to work through their pride. After a few minutes, the sun sets, and he decides he is tired. He motions to Milao, who rides back to fetch the rest of the men. Then he pushes forward with his mule, and lets the men decide if they wish to force the issue. They shut their mouths, move aside, and let him pass.

  Naturally there is still inspection to deal with, inside the wretched shed. He enters, doffs his heavy coat and armor gratefully, then strips out of the rest of his clothing so the limping elder can look him over with a candle and a long stick. The experience is no more unpleasant here than anywhere else, only a bit prolonged on account of the old man’s poor vision and paranoia. Rodrigo is cooperative—to a point—and after a few minutes he is permitted to clothe himself and yield the shed to Arnu.

  By the time all seven of them are found unBlemished, it is truly dark, and Rodrigo is in a foul temper; he had not reckoned on his present weariness, and how much will need to be accomplished before he sleeps. The hillmen have at least used the inspection time to start cooking their supper, and to find places for all twelve of their beasts.

  The space within the walls is, as expected, extremely cramped; there is space for a fire between the dozen or so buildings wedged inside, but little room for seating around it. Rodrigo finds himself perched on a short stool, closer than is strictly comfortable for a man in a steel cuirass and a long coat. He had expected to be entertained indoors, but they have no room large enough for the seven of them to speak with their hosts. Judging by the stray husks about his feet, this is their usual threshing-ground.

  Dieste, as Teniroz, is next in rank, and earns the only other stool. The old diviner gets an actual chair, a spindly thing with no arms or padding; Rodrigo elects not to contest the slight. The rest of them sit on the bare ground, or lean against the wall, however they please, and drink beer while they wait for their evening meal. Rodrigo has had better beer, but also much worse, and his black mood eases. The village is not so wretched as he feared; by craning his neck he can make out the shape of a high dovecote against the first stars, and he hears the bleating of several sheep mingling with the grunts of pigs and once, a horse’s whicker. Surely it is some breed of pony, but it can pull a plow, whatever it is. They have survived their isolation well enough here.

  Now the fire is hot, the stars are out, and he has as much of an audience as he is likely to get. Twenty or thirty of the locals are visible in the flickering firelight, sitting or leaning wherever they can find space. Two great mastiffs lounge by the fire, one receiving scratches from the diviner while the other serves as a pillow. Every other living thing in sight is a grown man; he has not seen a woman or child yet. It will do. He withdraws one of the six identical scrolls from his coat pocket, breaks its seal, and reads as best he can by the flickering light.

  “’These are the words of Ciamo the Third, High King of Siocaea, the one hundred and forty-third from the time of Rogu the Great. I give my warmest greetings to the valiant men of the hills, who have endured the trials of the Blemish and emerged strong and free.’” He pauses, looking around, while Arnu translates. Several eyebrows lift at this phrase or that. A few frown. One, a fellow about Rodrigo’s age, interrupts Arnu with a slight correction. “He speaks Siocene?”

  The man lifts his chin. “Some. Lord.”

  Arnu adds, “Our trail was clear, Lord; might be him and his as clears it. I imagine he comes down from the hills now and then, for a trade or a good time.”

  Rodrigo looks at the villager, who stares back. “They said nothing of this in town.”

  Arnu shrugs. “Might be they don’t tell the taxman, either.”

  “I don’t care about the taxes. How many of you can understand me now?” Nobody raises a hand. Fair enough. He will be careful what he says. He returns to his scroll. “’The Boghen say they are made from the stones of the hills, and that the stones of the hills have ore. When the fires of war burned, they drew out the iron within, and made of them a strong sword to drive back their enemies. Now your king has need of good steel, and will pay well for it.’”

  Several more frowns, shaking heads, annoyance. Rodrigo expected no better, and nods to Dieste, who clears his throat. He has served as quartermaster on more than one campaign, and knows every article they bear on this expedition, down to the last bullet. “We led six mules to this village. One of them is yours, with everything it bears. To wit: dry smoked herring, twenty pounds. Dry salt beef, ten pounds. Sea salt, ten pounds. Hard yellow Ghirecci cheese, ten pounds. White wheat flour, twenty-five pounds. Fine white linen, ten ells. Apple brandy, two gallons. Case of knives and sundry tools, crucible steel, twelve pounds excluding case. Box of sundry medical tinctures, ten pounds net.”

  He stops after every sentence, to let Arnu translate and his audience reflect. The younger men are gleeful, then astonished; their elders are troubled, confused, even frightened. They are poor, but evidently neither stupid nor ignorant. His Royal Highness could tax them heavily for five years and not make back what he paid for these “gifts,” if it were even worth the trouble of collection. They share looks of dismay, but do not speak.

  Rodrigo squints at the scroll. “’The age of swords, however, is behind us. Your king has no need of such brutish implements.’” He falters for only a heartbeat, painfully aware of the saber at his own hip. His Highness might have phrased it better. He elects to carry on. “’Now we lay steel rails instead, for the restoration of commerce across our ravaged kingdom. Of late we have repaired the line to the Free City of Pasavana.’” Another pause for translation. His audience remains largely skeptical. A few of the younger men look dazed instead, and he wonders if they are dreaming of the loot on their mule, and what might be done with it.

  “’Many of the gifts we bring you were made on restored machines, with Pasavanan coal. Much work remains to be done, and we are short of men. There are more tracks to lay down, more mills to restore, more wealth to create.’” Pause for translation. Mild interest from the younger men, deep unease from their elders. “’We are prepared to pay generous wages, and to waive taxation on any wealth remitted home. To facilitate this, we propose to improve and enlarge the roads surrounding your community.’” Now all are alarmed alike, several even forgetting to pretend they do not understand Siocene. Five or six of them, Rodrigo thinks.

  “’As for the insolent brigand now styling herself Eyanna Vogh, her end draws near. Three times she has attempted to face us in battle, and three times the army of Siocaea has bled her white.’” Pause. The villagers are indifferent. “’In more than ten years’ supposed reign, she has built and accomplished nothing but to impoverish your people further. Meanwhile the wealth and populace of Siocaea grow greater by the day. Eyanna Vogh will perish in shame, and our country will be united once more.’”

  Rodrigo elides the closing flourishes, as these folk have no reason to care. He rolls up the scroll and stands up to present it to the diviner. The old man accepts it with a grave expression. Probably it will be employed in the latrine when they are gone, or used for children to draw on with charcoal.

  With the letter finished, their hosts confine themselves to a few minor comments, all spoken by the diviner or other older man. Gratitude for the generous gifts, hope for a more prosperous future—nothing that could be offensive or controversial. The others share glances, or mutter out of the sides of their mouths. Rodrigo is relieved when dinner arrives, though it is chiefly a kind of porridge, sweetened with honey. He, his men, and the diviner receive a small portion of sausage as well. He takes a bite, looks at it. “Venison?”

  “Tastes like it,” Arnu replies, nipping experimentally at the end of his and throwing his lord a quelling sort of look. “Might be rabbit, under the spice. Easy to snare.” Rodrigo understands perfectly, and lets the matter drop.

  Soon their bowls are clean, and their mugs empty, and nothing remains but to find their several resting-places. As before, Arnu and Dieste will attend him; both have more than a right to share his bed, but the bed he is given is little more than a cot, and tight for two. Dieste yields his place and his titled right to Arnu’s older bones. Once the door is closed, and the room dark, he speaks up from the pile of hay on the floor: “My Lord. Did you see their firearms?”

  “I saw they had several. I didn’t get a closer look, they put them away so soon.” Their own weapons have remained close at hand for the entire evening, and manners be damned. “I was surprised they had so many.”

  “I was not, Lord. Not for long. Perhaps you noticed they had ramrods?” Arnu chuckles into the thin mattress.

  “I did not. Ramrods? So they have … muzzle-loaders? Muskets?”

  “Indeed. Even fifty years ago, they would have had better, lord, if they bore arms at all. They surely could not have maintained them so long. Those guns will be new.”

  “And can come from only one source,” Rodrigo concludes. “Eyanna Vogh has brought her gifts already.”

  “If gifts they are,” Arnu mumbles drowsily. “Might be she charged for the privilege. Or sells them powder and shot.”

  Rodrigo mulls it over. “She has an armory running, then. Not a good one, nothing fit to machine delicate parts. But she has steel, from some source, and is willing to stamp out guns and hand them to the peasantry. Why?”

  “I believe she is planning ahead, Lord, much as we are. As His Majesty wrote, she has lost men. She needs to recruit from the populace, and prefers them trained.”

  “Or practiced, mayhap,” Arnu says. “The lads here get venison; she gets more meat for her war-mill.”

  “I can’t believe these people would stand a chance against us in any numbers,” Rodrigo says. “Not with muzzle-loading muskets.”

  “I don’t believe so either, Lord, if you mean open battle. But they might ambush us in the woods, or set snipers. Lead balls would slow us down, and bleed us, for a cost she will happily pay. Eyanna Vogh is not an ambitious creature. She would be content to hold her hills, and raid us when she dares, if that is all she can get. Or so it seems to me.”

  There is little more to say. Rodrigo shuts his eyes, and tries to ignore the smell of all the sheep packed into the next room. The beer helps. Eventually, he gets to sleep.

  The next morning it is discomfort, and not sunlight, which rouses Rodrigo from his bed. The lice in the straw bite fiercely, and leave a lasting itch behind them. All in the service of the Convention. There is fresh porridge for breakfast, better salted this time. Once all have eaten, he gathers the villagers in from their tasks in the field—he still has not seen a woman or a child—for a notion that came to him in the small hours of the night.

  He gives the diviner the honor of selecting the target tree, and he picks out a slender birch. Dieste, lying prone, empties a magazine into it from 400 yards in under a minute. Gathering closer, they find the tree listing perilously to one side, its narrow trunk shredded to splinters across a space a foot high. Yossim gives it a mighty kick, and it crashes to the forest floor. The hillfolk simply stare at the stump. Dieste having carefully collected all fifteen brass casings from the dirt, Rodrigo wishes them a prosperous spring harvest, and they depart with their five mules before the sun is high.

  “Will we make it?” Milao wonders aloud, as soon as they are out of earshot. He has not slept well either. “They’ll be saddling up to report us to Vogh right now.”

  “No, they won’t,” Arnu corrects him.

  “What, because we gave them a gift?”

  “Aye. Vogh will hear, and want her share. They’ll be in a right hurry now, to hide what they can, and give word as late as they dare. Late enough we might think it’s the next village as told.”

  Milao grunts, and a long moment passes before he speaks again. “If you don’t mind my asking: what was the purpose of all that, Lord? None of those goods will buy their loyalty.”

  “Not their loyalty, no,” Rodrigo agrees. “But it will buy plenty of other things. We’ll be giving another mule to the next village, and the one after, and the one after. All of them will keep what they want and trade what they don’t. Word will spread, that the Dewrose Republic has wealth to spare on presents to mountain villagers.”

  “And then, they’ll … come down to work in the mills, Lord?” He manages not to sound too incredulous.

  “They might. Or Eyanna Vogh’s men might confiscate the lot. Those men aren’t Vogh’s, Milao, or ours either. But she is near, and jealous, while we are far away. And these poor folk are trapped between us. They do what they can, and hope they survive.”

  “I see, Lord,” Milao lies.

  Rodrigo sees no reason to explain further; Milao will see the sense of it later, or he will not, but it will do him good to think it over. Presently Dieste starts up on his flute again, and Yossim joins in as before.

  Rodrigo hopes at least a few of those hillmen elect to strike out for work in the lowlands. They, too, will be thinking hard, not just on the riches of the Siocenes, but on the fact that they sent a Peer of the Convention to visit their humble village, and the next five up the road. Along the way, that peer will inevitably get some sense of the state of the roads between them, and the defenses of each village, and what kind and quantity of foods they produce. These folk will not know much geography, but they surely realize that they lie between Eyanna Vogh and her enemies, and that armies require food and quarters.

  It might occur to those young men that work in the factories is not so bad a fate to chance. Better than risking their lives for the likes of Eyanna Vogh. Of course, if too many of them leave, there won’t be enough young folk to work the harvest, and the village will die. They might reflect that this is fate, or rather Nehm. One cannot work against the universe.

  Rodrigo has heard that the King’s letter went through several drafts before settling on its current, more conciliatory version. The first draft began with the same metaphor of iron from the hills, but went on to extend it in a different direction. Today men dig coal out of the hills as well, but fire does not make coal stronger, or turn it into swords. The fire devours it for its food, and what is left when the fire is gone, excepting ash and smoke?