Age of Legend, page 15
part #4 of Legends of the First Empire Series
Not that it matters. No one looks my way.
But it did matter.
Tressa had fallen so far and so fast, she was surprised she’d survived the drop. She’d been Second Chair—the chieftain’s wife. Now, she fought with the camp’s dogs for scraps. After her talk with Malcolm, she thought her life would improve, but that was six years ago. His parting gift hadn’t made a bit of difference. The most valuable thing in the world had failed to live up to its reputation. Malcolm disappeared, and the cage he mentioned never showed up. Maybe it’s like what he told Raithe—maybe the future got altered by someone kicking a falling stone from its expected path. For Tressa, nothing had happened, nothing changed.
Yeah, it did, she corrected herself. It got worse.
Gelston had died.
Tressa was left with a worthless key, a filthy shirt, and her pride—the last two of which were in the same condition. Her dignity was ragged, stained, and falling apart, but she continued to clutch at the remaining shreds, trying to hold them together.
Realization dawned then. Brin wasn’t actually offering to make her a dress. No one gave Tressa anything. “Why you doing this all a sudden? Is this some kind of trick? A way to humiliate me?”
As she said it, the pieces began falling into place. “You got others watching? They’re out in the tall grass, aren’t they? Got people hiding and sniggering at my stupidity? You’re gonna try to get me to think scribbles can talk, just so you can laugh at how pathetic you think I am. You thought I’d do anything for a dress because all I got is this—” She motioned to her filthy, oversized shirt.
Tressa’s throat tightened as if a hand had squeezed it closed. She thought once more of Gelston. Of how he’d handed her the shirt off his back. A man who had been hit by lightning and turned into an idiot had shown her more compassion than this . . . this . . .
Her face tightened in anger. “You’re a rotten bitch, just like your mother. That’s what you are. Well, you know what you can do with your dress and your”—Tressa looked at the ridiculous parchments so meticulously stacked—“lousy book!”
Before Brin could stop her, Tressa grabbed half the stack and threw it toward the river. The individual pages scattered in midair then settled like fall leaves. Several hit the water and floated away.
She expected Brin to frown in disappointment because Tressa hadn’t fallen for whatever sick and twisted hoax this was supposed to be, but she didn’t. Tressa had another handful of pages ready to throw when—
Brin screamed in horror.
The young woman ran for the stream and Tressa watched, dumbfounded, as the Keeper nearly killed herself on the jagged rocks at the river’s edge while diving in to save as many pages as she could. Out of maybe a hundred, she came away with no more than twenty. The rest were lost, snatched away by the swollen current. Brin pulled herself to shore and collapsed to her knees, half in and half out of the water. She clutched the pages to her heaving chest, crying.
When she looked back at Tressa, who was still holding the remaining parchments, she began to beg. “No, please!” Brin pleaded between sobs. “Please don’t, please. I’ve spent so long . . . I’ve worked so hard. My parents are in those pages . . . my family . . . my . . .”
Tressa stared at her, confused.
Brin wiped her eyes, and climbed back up the bank. The Keeper didn’t say anything else as she pulled the remaining pages from Tressa’s hands. Then she gathered them all up in the blanket.
Brin cradled her bundle, and said, “Padera was right. She always is.” As new tears fell, she turned and walked back toward her home.
“Not the end of the world,” Padera told Brin when the Keeper still hadn’t gotten out of bed by afternoon of the next day. This was the eighth time she’d said it. “You of all people know that worse can happen.”
What remained of The Book of Brin’s diminished stack was still wadded in the blanket, dropped from the day before.
“You don’t understand,” Brin said, her voice muffled as she spoke into the pillow. “This is the second time. My first book was destroyed in Alon Rhist.”
“So, you already know how to fix it. Now get up and do something about it. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Go to Roan’s, get more ink, and start again. Wallowing here isn’t helping anything.”
“The pages aren’t the problem. Don’t you see?”
The baffled look on the old woman’s face revealed she clearly didn’t.
Brin sat up. She was still in the dress that she’d failed to take off the day before when she crawled into bed, hoping never to see the light of another day. She wished Tesh were there, wanted to feel his arms around her, but he was always gone. As prymus of the Northern Legion, he rarely left the forest.
For years, ever since her conversation with Malcolm, Brin had tried to teach others to read. At first, everyone had been too busy. Afterward, they were still too busy. She’d tried to teach Roan, figuring she’d be the best at it. Everything went wonderfully at first. Roan understood the system immediately, but she had so little time. Everyone wanted her for something. Tressa was the only person in the camp who didn’t have a job to do because no one wanted to talk to her long enough to assign the miserable woman any tasks.
“The pages mean nothing,” Brin told Padera. “Not if no one can read them.”
“The Fhrey read.”
“Not really. Their system is for lists and commands. One symbol for one word. It’s not flexible, and it’s so limited. My marks represent sounds, so anything you can say I can write. The Fhrey can’t read my pages any more than anyone else. Malcolm said my writing could become universal, and in the future, everyone would read my book, but it looks like he was wrong.”
The confusion disappeared from Padera’s face, and the old woman sat down beside her. “Tressa didn’t just destroy a few pages. She crushed your dream.”
Tears slipped down Brin’s cheeks as Padera hugged her close.
“No, it’s worse than that. She destroyed our chance at a complete and accurate history. Centuries from now, no one will know what happened. I won’t rewrite the pages. I won’t ever write again. I can’t.”
“Then you really are stupid,” Tressa said.
They both looked toward the tent flap where Tressa stood, silhouetted by the late-afternoon light.
“And you are going to be black and blue once I lay hands on my cudgel!” Padera growled and moved to get up.
“Relax, old hag, I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“You’ve done nothing else since the day you were born,” Padera shot back.
“Ain’t it the truth, but not today. I just came by because—well, here.”
Brin heard something slap the floor. Looking over the edge of the bed, she saw a stack of damp parchments, maybe as many as fifty.
“Don’t know if I got them all, but they were all I could find, and I looked pretty hard.” Tressa moved back a step, and Brin could see just how filthy she was. Not just dirty, like when they’d last met, but a real sight. The woman was caked in mud. The old shirt of Gelston’s was torn in places and Tressa had scratches on her cheeks, forehead, and arms. Some were still bleeding. “Anyway, there they are.”
Tressa turned to leave.
“Wait!” Brin bolted from the bed.
“What?” Tressa whirled. “You want an apology or something?”
“That’s the least you could do, you vile drunk,” Padera hooted at her.
“No,” Brin said. “No I—I just, I . . .” Brin rushed to the basket beside the bed and pulled out a bolt of wool cloth woven in the same Rhen pattern as Brin’s dress. “I wanted to know if this would be all right. You know, for your dress?”
Tressa stood just outside the tent looking back, that same disbelief in her eyes.
“I mean, assuming you learn to read, of course.”
Padera made a pfft sound, which made Tressa shake her head. “The old hag is right. I can’t learn nothin’. It’d be a waste of time for both of us.”
“I’ll make it anyway. You can have it if you just try to learn.”
Tressa narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“The same can be said about you—you blighted curse upon the world,” Padera said. “You’re walking around in stolen, thin linen with winter coming on, and this woman is offering to make you as fine a garment as—well, better than the likes of you deserve—and you’re squawking? If Brin is stupid, you’re—you’re—there just ain’t no word low enough to describe you. But that’s fine because she shouldn’t be wasting her time doing anything nice for the likes of you. So go back to Gelston’s tent and curl up next to his cold corpse, like the raow you are.”
Tressa tightened her jaw, folded her arms, and shot a defiant stare in Padera’s direction, but she spoke to the Keeper. “Okay, Brin, sure. You’ve got a deal. If that old witch doesn’t want me to do it, then I’d like nothing better. And that dress had best have a folded hem and low neckline. I’m still young enough to get another man.”
Brin smiled as she watched Tressa walk away. When the woman was across the quad and out of sight, Padera clapped the Keeper on the shoulder. “No sense in begging when dealing with the likes of Tressa. Say what you will, but she’s a fighter. And to get someone like that to do what you want—give them something to battle against.” The old woman gave her a wink and a grin. “Now go get those wet pages off my floor.”
Chapter Eleven
Techylors
They fell like leaves in the forest. I had no idea what it was like out there for him, for all of them. I stayed in camp, wrote my book, worked with Tressa, and worried myself sick. — The Book of Brin
The moment the arrows landed, the instant Tesh realized he hadn’t been hit, he knew they would survive. He lay on the forest floor, both elbows planted in damp leaves, stomach draped uncomfortably over a tree’s root. He peered through the clasped hands of yellowing ferns that quivered with his breath. Overhead, the white-feathered arrow meant for him—now a weather vane showing the direction of his enemies—stood out from the mossy bark of the chestnut tree. Tesh had slithered around the base to the safe side—the side without the arrow—where he lay listening, breathing dead leaves and moist dirt.
He couldn’t tell how many had been hit by the ambush; his men were trained not to cry out. A few had to be dead. It wasn’t possible to take a volley like that and not lose at least some. As it turned out, the elves were natural archers, and Rhune soldiers no longer wore metal in the Harwood. A lucky pause in his step was what had saved Tesh’s life. Good things sometimes happened. Mostly they didn’t, but on rare occasions, luck worked magic that even the Orinfar couldn’t stop.
“Prymus?” Tesh heard a soft, concerned voice calling from the ferns to his right.
“Meeks?” Tesh asked.
“What should I do, sir?” The words were spit out in a rush, a little slurred, a lot shaken.
Meeks was new and far from a full Techylor. Those who fought in Tesh’s legion were trained in all of the seven disciplines he’d adapted from the Galantians. The process was considered ridiculous by many—too long, too demanding, and definitely too extreme. Most of his men failed to complete their full apprenticeship. Over the last five years, only Brigham Killian had achieved what Tesh considered competence in all the disciplines, but those that had at least some proficiency in each were admitted to his elite squadron, the Harwood Techylors. Needing to field a fighting force, Tesh was required to send out partially trained soldiers. Meeks was one of those. Just seventeen, the kid was making his first trip into the Harwood.
It’s difficult to believe I was his age during my first visit to this wretched forest. But I was old even before that day. Dureya, and what the Galantians did to it, made me grow up faster than anyone should.
First trips to the Harwood were always difficult. Years of training did nothing to prepare the recruits for the reality of the forest and the indescribable terror that accompanied an invisible foe trying to kill you.
“Stay low and on the”—Tesh looked up—“south side of a tree. You are behind a tree, right?”
A rustle. “Am now.”
Tesh shook his head and marveled that the elves had missed Meeks. The only answer had to be that the boy hadn’t been shot at. “Good. Stay there. No peeking.”
“We gonna be okay?”
“We aren’t dead, Meeks. They always get a free shot. It’s the price we pay for finding them. Relax, we’re gonna be fine.”
Sounding like a sudden downpour of hard rain, another bombardment of arrows ripped through the fall leaves. None landed anywhere near Tesh, and he quickly blew three loud whistles. On the third note, he rolled left and drew both swords while leaping to his feet. He sprinted forward two steps, planted a foot, spun left, then ran again. He aimed for big trees, ran right at them, then veered away at the last minute. Either an arrow or a late-season hornet buzzed past his cheek. A moment later, another chipped bark off an oak as he rushed past. Definitely not a hornet.
The elves who’d ambushed them would be up in the trees on the north side of the trail. Fight then flight was the elves’ best tactic, and sticking to one side of their target made that easier. The one drawback of hiding in a tree was having to climb down to run away. Elves were fast, but not that quick.
The maple tree.
Tesh focused on the one with the red leaves and a broad set of easy-to-climb limbs. After years of fighting, he didn’t have to see his enemy to know what was needed. Because only one arrow had come his way, and none at Meeks, Tesh guessed there were fewer elves than Techylors. He guessed four or five; they wouldn’t attack with less. The feathers on the arrow had been white. No white birds existed in the Harwood, and white arrows didn’t remain that way long. The archer was a new recruit. With the age of elves sent to the war becoming increasingly younger, Tesh could surmise he was fighting a pack of inexperienced kids, assuming the term kid could apply to someone a few centuries old.
Tesh heard a yelp to his right, a high-pitched elven cry. Either one of the Fhrey had fallen in his rush to climb down—unlikely, but he’d seen it happen—or one of Tesh’s men had beaten the prymus to first blood. Tesh’s disappointment lifted after he spotted two targets in a tiny glade. Pointed ears twitched as their heads snapped around to stare at him, so deerlike. These two wore forest-green cloaks layered and dyed to blend with foliage. Given that elves had stolen the Rhunes’ secret of bows, Tesh thought it fair play to adopt their deceptive garb. This made it difficult to tell friend from foe, at least until they moved. Fhrey moved like deer.
In the quiet span that separated two heartbeats, a pair of arrows flew at Tesh. He couldn’t see them. All Tesh registered was the twang of bows. His reaction was instinct and reflex. He cross-sliced over his body with both swords and felt the thrilling snap of wooden shafts clipped between his blades. One was close enough to slap his chest.
The two elves in shambling green hoods stared with gaping mouths.
“Your turn,” he told them in Rhunic, knowing neither would understand. He didn’t care. Tesh only wanted to attract their attention, keep them off balance. That was the important thing when fighting elves—taking away their equilibrium. Without it, they were as helpless as a cat in a pond. Risking a dozen decades of life, these too-recent immigrants to the bloody Harwood were well spooked, and they never saw Edgar or Atkins taking aim at them. The arrows were nearly silent, and the elves made even less noise when they fell.
“That’s it,” Edgar told Tesh, bending down to search the bodies. At thirty-eight, Edgar had become the old man, a title made all the more apt by the growing rash of gray in his beard and a cowardly hairline that retreated under his hood—what the man referred to as his stress line.
“Seriously?” Tesh asked, disappointed. He looked to the forest, hoping he was wrong.
“Sorry,” Edgar said, handing up the arrows to Atkins. He studied one of the elven bows, then tossed it away. “Kids again. Not even a hundred years old, I’ll bet.”
They didn’t linger. Leaving the bodies where they lay, the three began walking back through the trees toward the trail.
Disgusted, Tesh shook his head. “This is ridiculous. How many were there?”
“Five.”
“That’s all?” Tesh frowned. “A couple of years ago, Gray Arrows were behind every tree! You couldn’t enter the forest without coming away with blood on your sword.”
“It’s like overhunting back home,” Atkins said. “The Harwood was theirs; now it’s ours.”
“But it’s still dangerous,” Edgar declared, pointing to where Meeks lay in the ferns, an arrow embedded in his left eye.
“He peeked.” Tesh sighed. “Anyone else?”
“Nope,” Edgar reported. “Oh, well, Brigham took one through the hand, but he’ll be okay.”
“Really? What was he doing? Waving at them?”
Edgar shrugged. “Never know with him. He’s a lot like you.”
Tesh grinned. “He is, isn’t he?”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
The other new recruit, a Melen by the name of Vargus, joined them.
Tesh looked around. “What about Anwir?”
With a glance and a nod, Edgar referred him to Atkins. The short southerner, who had grown a partial beard Tesh was still getting used to, was stuffing the captured arrows into his overfull satchel. “He’s fine.”
“Didn’t do anything, though,” Vargus reported. “I was right beside him. Galantians are supposed to be such great warriors, but that Fhrey just watched.”
“They never do anything,” Brigham said as he appeared out of the trees, one bloody hand wrapped in a cloth. “Can’t defend themselves against their own kind because their god won’t let them. If I were Anwir, I’d be looking for a new god.”
