‘They are thrifty, and they work hard,’ Hagor said carefully. ‘I haven’t seen any stealing.’
‘You will. The young ones are like wild cattle – vicious.’ Marco showed the heavy-bladed knife at his hip. ‘I’m ready if they want trouble.’
‘There’s folk in the valley say they will kill us and take our farms if’n we let them,’ Stepan said. But he said it experimentally, looking for a reaction.
Aranthur’s father wrinkled his nose. ‘Not the way I see them, lad. For my money, they have had all the trouble they ever need, and now they just want to live.’ He turned to Aranthur. ‘Many Easterners in the City, son?’
‘Yes, Patur.’ Aranthur thought of Sasan, of the chai girl, of all the refugees.
‘And they do all the crime, eh?’ old Hari asked.
Aranthur thought. ‘Not really. Though they are very poor.’
‘Why don’t they go back where they belong?’ Marco asked.
‘Then we’d have no workers,’ Stepan said.
‘We worked these farms on our own before,’ Marco said.
Aranthur shrugged. ‘We came here as refugees, didn’t we, Patur?’
Hagor raised an eyebrow. The eyebrow told Aranthur that his father wasn’t impressed – that he appreciated Aranthur’s argument but this was not the time or place to express it. All that in the twitch of an older man’s bushy eyebrow.
‘We weren’t refugees,’ Hari said. ‘Our folk were soldiers, and we took what we won.’
‘Not the way I heard it,’ Aranthur said.
He smiled when he said it, because Mira said you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
‘And what did you hear, in your precious City? That farmers as dumb as dung and stupid as cattle?’ Marco frowned.
Aranthur had, in fact, heard such foolish talk in the city. He shrugged.
‘I’d say the evidence suggests—’
‘What kind o’ priest talk is that?’ asked Marco. ‘Say what you mean.’
Aranthur shook his head. ‘I am saying what I mean. The evidence is unclear.’
‘Our folk have stories going back two thousand years,’ Marco said. ‘I know ’em. Best you know ’em too. Seems to me the Academy is filling your head with nonsense.’
‘Our stories are mostly myth,’ Aranthur said. ‘Most of it is dung, as you say.’
There was a long silence.
‘Really?’ Marco said.
‘Yes,’ Aranthur said. ‘Most of the Arnauts were soldiers for the Old Empire, or so I understand. We carried Eagles as our standards, and that’s why we were People of the Eagle.’ He looked around. ‘When our side lost, we took refuge in these hills, because we could defend them.’
‘Horse shit,’ Marco said. ‘We led the fucking revolution.’
‘Show me some evidence of that?’ Aranthur said.
‘Everyone round here knows,’ Marco insisted.
‘Everyone around here knows how to take Armeans and make them servants and slaves,’ Aranthur spat. ‘Everyone knows how to blame them for being victims. There’s a war in the East, and these people are in no way at fault, and you blame them. They are poor because everything has been taken from them.’
He got up and walked out.
Behind him, he saw old Hari bar the door and say ‘Oh no you don’t,’ to Marco.
Aranthur walked across the mud of the yard and then turned and began walking home, his feet plunging deep in the cold earth. It reminded him of the first night he met Iralia.
In the morning, at home, breakfast was silent.
‘You are growing away from us,’ his father said, when ploughing was done.
Aranthur frowned. ‘It feels as if I am the same and you are growing away from me.’
Hagor nodded, staring at the ground. ‘They are not fools. I don’t like their … righteousness. But this is our land, and we’ve worked hard to make this, and we’re not of a mind to lose it.’
‘Lose it? To Sali? To Souti?’
‘To an endless flood of people from other islands and other archipelagos. You haven’t been here. There’s folk living in the deep woods. They ain’t nice folk. There’s robbers on the roads.’
‘Two men tried to rob me last winter,’ Aranthur said. ‘An Arnaut and a Byzas.’
‘What’d you do – use your sword?’ Hagor asked, with a smile that suggested that they’d bested his poor son.
‘I killed one,’ Aranthur said. ‘The other got away.’
‘You killed …’ His father looked at him. ‘You scare me, son. You sound like my brother.’
Aranthur sighed. ‘I may work in the City this summer.’
‘You’ll put your matur in her grave, you know that,’ Hagor said, only half joking.
Aranthur shook his head. ‘Whatever I do,’ he admitted wearily.
Nonetheless, when he rode away, he had three new shirts in his saddlebag, and a hide of beautiful leather, fine-grained and supple, for some project or other, and a vast array of potted vegetables and other delicacies. He’d eaten meat almost every day while home, and it upset his stomach – not the least of the afflictions of home.
He trotted down his father’s farm lane, waving at Marta all the way. They were all standing on the new porch. Souti was stacking firewood behind them. Sali was working in the eastern fields; Aranthur gave him a wave and received one in return.
He turned into the road, which was thick with spring mud, and he guided Rasce along the grassy verge where the ground was drier and less work for a horse. As he came to the bridge, he saw a woman walking; as he came up, he was surprised to see Alfia. She raised her head, saw him, and gave him a dazzling smile.
‘Marco is an idiot,’ she said, by way of greeting. ‘But I have to assume our wedding is off. Are you going to Korfa?’
Korfa was the next major Arnaut village, three long leagues away and over the ridge.
‘I’m bound for Fosse and the City.’ Aranthur considered. ‘I can go to Korfa,’ he said agreeably. ‘If you’d like a ride?’
‘You speak like a gentleman. My matur praised you to the skies, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to ride your horse.’
As ‘ride your horse’ was an Arnaut expression for sex, her cheeks suddenly burned. But then she winked.
Aranthur laughed. ‘Well, I’ll dismount, then, and we’ll walk a ways together.’
In fact, they talked very easily. He felt as if Alfia had become another person; gone was the severe and self-praising young harridan, replaced by … a woman. He kept peeping at her over the horse’s neck, surprised each time by her loveliness. Interested that she gave no sign of a passionate kiss in the kitchen.
She asked him to retell the story of the evening’s argument and he did. She laughed.
‘So much fuss over the Easterners,’ she said. ‘Does your uncle really live with one?’
‘Yes,’ Aranthur said.
‘Do you really speak Armean?’
‘Yes, a little,’ he admitted. ‘I’m working on Safiri.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like to know how. Teach me to say hello, and goodbye, so I sound like less of an arse. Your sister and I take food to them, sometimes.’ She pointed into the woods below the main pass. ‘There are villages all through the woods. You know that?’
‘Stepan and I found a couple of them,’ he admitted.
The time passed very pleasantly.
But she refused to be drawn on her own views, and kept asking him things, so that he found himself telling her about the Master of Arts and the Emperor, and finally about his duel in the inn yard.
They were at the top of the ridge, with the Valley of the Eagle behind them and Korfa laid out below them like a painting: red tile roofs and a beautiful quilt of fields; young barley, newly turned earth, winter grass.
‘We are alone on the road,’ Alfia said. ‘Are you leaving, Aranthur?’
He looked out over the valley. ‘Maybe.’
She nodded. Her dark hair blew in the stiff breeze.
; ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m the richest girl in the Valley.’ She made a face. ‘I’d trade it to be you. I want to go and swing a sword at my enemies and cast magiks. Instead, I get to sit and wait to see which mud-booted Faroi or Bastoi or Timoi comes and wins my hand.’
Aranthur didn’t know what to say.
‘Sometimes I daydream that you marry me,’ she said carefully. ‘And take me away to the city.’ She looked back at him. And shrugged. ‘But that’s not going to happen, is it? It is in my matur’s head, and your matur’s.’
Aranthur said nothing.
‘So part of me wants you to go and never come back, so I can imagine your adventures.’ She shrugged. ‘I think a lot of nonsense. My matur tells me so all the time.’
Aranthur reached out a hand and put it on her shoulder, and in a moment they were kissing, on the mountain above the pass. Sheep’s bells tinkled on the slope above them.
She pushed him away. ‘Oh, dear. That’ll be enough of that.’
She smiled, and her face was flushed, and she was beautiful. And she turned, and walked, straight-backed, down the road to Korfa. Three steps, she walked.
He took a step after her, without considering …
Alfia turned into his arms, and again her mouth was under his.
Rasce cropped grass.
Later, they lay together, naked, in a patch of sweet-smelling thyme. Alfia stared at the sky above her. She was laughing, or weeping.
Aranthur knew he’d done something that he could not change. Without thinking.
She wasn’t weeping. She was laughing.
‘If we’ve made a baby …’ she said. And stretched. She leant over. ‘You’ve done that before.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted.
She licked the tip of his nose. ‘Pray with me,’ she said.
They knelt, naked, and prayed to Aphres the Lover.
‘My horse is going to leave us. Or someone will come,’ Aranthur said after the second time.
Alfia was still watching the sky.
‘I know. I never want this to end.’
And then, like a practical Arnaut girl, she rose, went to the Bektash, the saint’s spring, and washed in the freezing water. And dressed.
Aranthur did the same, a little embarrassed at the rapid passing from intimacy to reserve.
But then she licked his nose and danced away.
‘No more kissing,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll never be able to walk away.’ She picked up her basket. And stopped. ‘If we made a baby …’ she said carefully.
‘I’ll marry you,’ Aranthur said.
She nodded. ‘But that’s not what you want.’ She shrugged. ‘Never happened.’
He smiled. ‘Two hours ago, I’d have said no,’ he admitted. ‘Now, I admit that a farm in the Valley seems …’
‘We’d never get any work done,’ she quipped. ‘I’ll write to you.’ She shook her head. ‘Pray Aphres I don’t kindle. Go be a Magos, Aranthur. Someone from here should escape.’
She walked away down the hill and didn’t look back.
Aranthur stood on the high ridge for a long time. And then he took a deep breath and let it out, and led Rasce across country, into the old woods north of the road. It was instantly colder, like riding downhill into winter. Under the trees there was still snow, whereas up on the ridge the thyme was soft and sweet …
He walked carefully, and Rasce, as an old campaigner, was quiet. They descended from the ridge and plunged into the tall spruce, and soon enough they struck one of the better trails. Aranthur knew the woods well enough, and he enjoyed the adventure. But he was thinking of Alfia, and he was afraid of what he’d done.
An hour later, he found the first of the little bark shelters. No smoke came from the mud chimney, and no one responded to his calls.
The smell told him what he would find inside, and indeed outside, as wolves had already been at the dead baby. The father and mother were dead, too, and their corpses were horrifying. He didn’t grasp what was terrible about them, because he averted his gaze and backed out of the blanket-door.
Aranthur stood in the rotting snow under the eaves of the spruce trees and tried to breathe.
He found two more little bark houses. In one, all the inhabitants had been killed with a sharp knife. He had no idea whether it was murder or suicide. But none of them had any food, and all of them had dead children. In the other, no wolves had been at the bodies. Again, the corpses had that awful look; this time he looked longer. It was as if they had no bones. They were swollen, but somehow … soft.
In the fourth little hut he searched, he noted that the man – the dead man – had a kuria crystal clutched in his swollen, boneless hand.
After the fifth, he stopped looking in the huts. He retched, mounted his horse, and rode away.
It was after dark when he rode into the yard at the inn. He unsaddled Rasce and put him in the stable and gave him extra grain.
In the morning, he was careful and polite with Nenia and Lecne. He said very little.
Lecne demanded a sword lesson.
Aranthur set his mouth and provided it. Hasti didn’t come, but Nenia did, and he was thorough, and worked them until they were tired, cutting and parrying at each other with sticks.
Finally, over dinner, he found himself telling Don Cucino about the dead Armeans in the woods.
‘Sunset!’ spat Cucino. ‘Why didn’t they say something?’
‘Proud,’ Donna Cucina said. ‘Proud and cold. It was a hard winter.’
They summoned the priest of the Lady and the doctor and a few other citizens of Fosse, and Aranthur testified to what he had seen.
‘Mayhap there are some alive,’ the doctor said. ‘We’ll find them. We should have looked weeks ago.’
He glared at the priest, but the priest shrugged.
‘We had our own starving folk this winter.’ He glanced at the priest, who was praying.
At dinner he told them all about the City while Donna Cucina praised his care in buying spices again. He told again of meeting the Emperor.
Donna Cucina rose when he was done.
‘We have some news too, don’t we?’ she asked, looking at Nenia. Hasti looked away.
Nenia flushed. Aranthur found her as beautiful as Alfia – much the same straight-nosed, high-eyebrowed beauty.
What’s wrong with me? he wondered.
‘I’m to go to the Academy,’ she said. ‘I was recommended by the vanaxia commanding the troops on the road.’ She spoke with quiet happiness.
‘She translated all the Ellene on the old stones for them,’ Donna Cucina said.
‘That’s splendid!’ Aranthur said. ‘Wonderful! When do you start?’
‘In the autumn. I can’t wait.’ She blushed. ‘I plan to catch up with you.’
‘You can learn Safiri,’ he said happily. ‘I could use the help.’
‘Safiri?’ she asked. ‘An Easterner tongue, yes? That would be a challenge. A different alphabet and everything?’ She whistled. ‘I’ve been playing with Armean whenever the Easterners come for grain. And Attian. What does Safiri sound like?’
Aranthur repeated Sasan’s phrase about stealing, using his intonation.
Nenia got a faraway look in her eyes. ‘A little like Armean, then.’
Aranthur shrugged. ‘If you say so.’
‘Armean is difficult,’ she said again. ‘And they all speak it … differently. It’s a fiendish language. So …’
Aranthur glanced at her parents. ‘Watch out,’ he said. ‘The Academy will never let her leave.’
‘And I’ll just stay here and run an inn,’ Lecne said. ‘You two can have all the adventures, and I’ll …’ He paused. ‘Rot!’ he spat.
‘Lec,’ his sister said, but Lecne had risen, a dark flush on his face, and he slammed the kitchen door.
Aranthur followed him out into the biting spring air.
Lecne was leaning against the back wall of the stable. He had a stock cheroot burning in his hand, and he was looking o
ut over the vineyards that ran west from the inn on the Volta road.
‘I want to have a life too,’ he said, as Aranthur came round the stable’s corner.
‘Innkeeper of a fortified inn on the Empire’s trunk road?’ Aranthur leant back against the rough stone. ‘Really doesn’t sound so bad.’
Lecne laughed. ‘I agree. Until you show up with your posh accent and your sword. And now my sister, to rub my nose in my provincial backwardness for the rest of my life.’
Aranthur took a draw at the stock. He didn’t smoke often, but he would sometimes have a pipe at home. This was good stock, as good as his patur’s.
‘Your mother doesn’t like stock.’
‘My mater is against everything.’ He shrugged. ‘She doesn’t want Nenia to go to the Academy. She wants her home with babies. She said so, just that way.’
They stood looking out into the darkness.
‘My matur is trying to get me to marry the local rich girl,’ Aranthur said, in the patois of home. ‘I walked with her today. She was … different. Grown up. She, too, wants adventures.’ He shook his head. The stock took his head in unaccustomed directions. ‘Home is different. Full of refugees and greed. No, I don’t mean that. Sunlight, Lecne, the dead kids shook the hell out of me yesterday. And I suddenly thought that I could have a good life, at home.’
Lecne nodded. ‘Sounds bad,’ he agreed. ‘This girl is as pretty as Nenia?’
Aranthur shook his head. ‘Yes. No. Fuck off.’
They both laughed.
Lecne shook his head. ‘I hate that there’s people dying in the woods. We’ll go tomorrow and find ’em.’
‘Yes. Yes, there’s good folk here.’
Lecne was looking out over the vineyards again.
‘There’s horsemen moving out on the road,’ he said suddenly.
He ran for the inn. Aranthur lingered for a moment, listening. He could hear the clink of horse tack and the rattle of men’s harness – armour. It was a sizeable body of horse.
He followed Lecne.
Inside the inn, they were closing the gate to the yard and then the heavy inn door, studded with huge iron nails. Aranthur threw his back into it, and then helped Nenia with the shutters. The inn had dozens of heavy oak shutters, each weighing about as much as a child, loopholed for crossbows.