Skandra Tyullis (roll_the_bones) wrote in caeleste, @ 2010-11-07 12:45:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | npc, the heir |
only the dead (narrative)
Gallien Arbus swung his horse 'round, enjoying that snap and hiss of leather as gloves writhed against the reins. His boots dug into the stirrups. His coat, long and lined with wool, rasped against the flanks of the beast. If you were going to cut a dashing figure, this was one way to do it. Someone was calling to him from the cattle pens. This was the sort of thing you could expect if you were a landowner. He'd saved his wages after twenty-five years in the king's army, saved them to buy acres upon acres of the most beautiful land that Tyrus had to offer. There were gentle hills to the north of him and wide plains to the south. After all this time it was his. You could spend hours traveling a land by horseback and not know it as well as you knew it on that first night, wandering from tree to tree with a bottle of wine in your hand. The only thing that could have made it better was a pipe.
There was not so far to ride, now.
The fellow who was standing next to the pen's gate did not look like a farmer. You didn't earn scars above, through and below both eyes by tending sheep and slaughtering pigs. You didn't have the sneer of superiority painted on your face by a horse's rear in winter. Those were things a soldier earned, and they were things a soldier kept, regardless of where he went next. Arbus pulled Granted up short, with the warhorse's powerful shoulders behind the move. Just like his rider - and this fine soldier standing post outside the pig slop - Granted was not used to the work of a farm. He was putting his effort into it, because he had developed a distaste for orders that made no sense, but he was not yet used to it.
"General," the man said casually. "Two of the pigs are sick as all hell, sir. Got the pink spots beneath their eyes."
"Don't call me that," Arbus muttered darkly. "Did you separate the damned things already, you lazy son of a bitch?"
"Already did. Don't know how much good it done."
"If they turn red tomorrow, you kill them and you burn the bloody bodies."
"Sir," and now the big man hesitated. "Found another arrow in the fields. Them Folks of Ammadad-"
"People of Aumazahd," Arbus corrected with a sour note. "Another one of theirs?"
"Still with the plague on it, sir, so nobody touched it but me. You think they're making the pigs sick?"
"Not unless pigs are joining the militia," and now the general-turned-farmer was dry, very dry. "Put Lobbie and Fastbuck on guard duty tonight. Bundle up, no fires. They see anything moving in the trees, try to get a better look. Don't engage unless engaged first, and then ring those bloody guard bells I paid twenty coin apiece for-"
"They know their business, General, and if they don't I'll see they do," Teb sneered up at his former superior. "Like as not just rustlers. Ain't enough horses left in this country for stealing, General."
"Thank the gods I am in charge," Arbus sneered back. "Or we'd all be hanging by our necks about now, you cur. Get back to work."
Teb was the best soldier Arbus had ever seen. Keen insight, the ability to judge almost any situation on all its possible merits and faults, one hell of a warrior and smart enough to command his own forces. Teb didn't want the notoriety. He also didn't want any more blood on his conscience. If that didn't confirm this horsethief-turned-soldier was smarter than his General, nothing else would. Arbus continued on his course from before, steering his powerful animal away from the last of the farmhouses and toward those fine towers that had been erected at the edge of his lands. Stone walls ran between them, high enough to keep out anyone trying to stroll or crawl right in, but low enough that Granted cleared them in a single dangerous bound.
When he'd awoken for his shave this morning, the Steward had left a note for him. Jaila was not the sort to worry herself over foolish things. She'd been his second and his backbone through a career that meant fighting orcs in the mountains, fighting those mindless assassins from Astora before the nation had collapsed on itself, and occasionally fending off the less-restrained border outfits from Faustben that made their way across the territories. He'd also squared against his own people more than once. Some of them were the same cloth as the border ruffians from Faustben, looking for a good fight and a good drunk. Others had joined with those blasted People of Aumazahd. He'd been far away from the action, and by the time he'd reached the capitol, most of the fighting had been done. By farmers! He knew they were stolid and dependable people all his life.
He just didn't know the army would leave it to them to defend their bloody homes.
The meetings with Sisenand after the White Riders had gone were tempestuous. Arbus believed that with a month of solid recruiting and a month of solid training, he could lead a force into the field that would be large enough to destroy the People of Aumazahd. This, Arbus had argued, could be done without foreign help. What he discovered in arguing his point was that Sisenand had been offered foreign help by Lady Vera of Beit-Orane - that war-mongering tribe of the deep south - and that Sisenand had every intention of accepting it. Arbus had no trouble with good people doing good works. What troubled him was accepting foreign soldiers onto the land of Tyrus.
Rather than agreeing with his counterparts and going along with this mad scheme - which would forever be associated with his name, should he retain his position as general - Arbus had tendered his resignation. Sisenand had offered to give him the title of lord, offered to pay for this farm land himself, but Arbus could not in good conscience agree with the plan Sisenand had laid out. Vahran had been an angry and exclusive fool in most things, but his son was trying too hard to undo what had been done in the past. Tyrus had neither wealth nor military superiority working for it. Territories in the badlands that had been restored after the Breaking sought alliance with the Free Cities or Faustben or Astarii, not Tyrus. Astora's grave was a mire and expansion there was akin to making your bed of hornet's nests. Simply put, good options no longer existed for expansion unless the unclaimed territories were finally claimed.
And yet here they were, tying themselves to the Free Cities' apron strings, when Tyrus could do well enough on its own.
Right now a force of the Free Armies - never a greater contradiction in terms than implying an army was 'free' when it was anything but - held near the southwestern border, as Sisenand bargained with their representative for access to Tyrus. And here was Arbus, killing whomever he could find that claimed the People as their aegis, while liberating farm after farm from the control of fear. His 'militia' was nothing more than a handful of trained soldiers providing the backbone to farmers who'd been taught how to shoot for the throat. His 'command' was whatever armed posse could be scraped together on short notice. Yet there was progress, and if the title of General had no longer suited him, the title of Baron did just fine. There were rumors that Sisenand was going to order his arrest. There were rumors that he'd ordered his militia - called Gallien's Bulls by most - to attack any detachment of the Free Armies they saw in Tyrus' claimed territory.
Both were half-truth, half-lie. Arbus didn't think his militia could stand against a concentrated rush of the Free Armies. Yet there were other ways to put dead soldiers in the hands of the Free Armies, and he would use whatever means he could. Arbus was the reason Faustben's border ruffians had burned no towns. Their army was not great, but the Captain of that army was one of the great military minds of this time, and he knew it as well as anyone.
Jaila was waiting for him at the top of the hill. That meant it was urgent, but also drew a clear boundary. Arbus pulled Granted into a shorter stride, managing the great horse's speed so that he could dismount as soon as he came alongside Jaila. What he saw did not please him. Two soldiers with arrows nocked, waiting to draw. They were dressed in farmers' clothes, but they were soldiers to the end. Jaila had her sword at her hip, and her eyes were grave. Yet it wasn't the darkly beautiful severity of her face, with its high cheeks and sharp nose, that gave him pause. It was the orchard. Apples were a favorite of his, and a good addition to a fighter's diet, but the orchard was not the one he remembered from the night before. Trees were bone-white and faded, devoid of any nuance or shading in their bark. Leaves had turned black and begun to fall away.
The apples lay on the ground, rotting.
"What is this?" Arbus demanded angrily.
"Sir, don't-"
One of the soldiers actually dropped his bow to seize Arbus' arm. Jaila seized the other. Arbus almost went for his steel. Almost. Then he saw it. In the middle of this orchard, whose earth was black and who stank of decay, stood one of Arbus' own men. His face was pale as the tree. His breathing was harsh and labored, if the movement of his chest was anything to judge by. Not a soldier, this one, but a worker of the land. He wore no coat, only a vest above plainspun trousers. Boots were worn. What concerned Arbus was the redness around the fellow's eyes. What was going on? A move of his eyes told the tale. There was a clearly demarcated boundary where the blackness began. And as he traced it with his eyes, trying to understand, the farmhand called out.
"Gallien," he called roughly, weakly. "Damndest thing I ever saw."
"Stay where you are!" Jaila shouted.
"Why," and Arbus finally shook them off; they were convinced he was staying put. "Didn't you-"
"We have no mages and no priests," Jaila hissed, low. "I wanted you to see."
The second soldier raised his bow. The farmhand called something, but Arbus made himself ignore it until the snap of the bow rang out. Festering apples squelched beneath the farmhand as his body fell to the ground. Through the eye, then; a good shot and a mercy all at once. None of them wept. They'd seen their friends cleaved and ruined on too many fields to weep here, when work was yet to be done. It was crossing that boundary that had done in the farmhand. Crossing it himself would only seal his fate. Yet there was a staleness in the air that he could smell. Granted was backing away from the field, strange noises coming out of his mouth. Arbus had never seen anything like this, but he'd heard of it.
"This," one of the soldiers said. "Is impossible."
"The Deadlands are-" Jaila began.
"-now among us," Arbus finished grimly. "The world was changed at the Breaking. Who knows what's possible and what isn't? Only the dead, and they've no way to tell their secrets to us. No one goes into the orchard. Start checking our fields. Use the soldiers and not the farmers. I don't want any further deaths of curiosity. Send messengers to the outliers, and to the militia posts. I want word back within a day. If there are more fields like this, they need to be marked, and quickly."
"Sir," Jaila acknolwedged his orders with a simple word. "If I may ask-"
"This doesn't change a thing," Arbus interrupted again, as was his right, by the gods. "In three days we're going to take one of their patrols. In four days I expect we will be fully embroiled in a war with the Free Cities. Sisenand will only have two options, then, and neither one will seem palatable. But either will do for our purposes."
He did not notice them gone. His eyes were red-rimmed as he stared into that pitch of black, and the body of a man named Tel, who had until very recently played a fine flute and argued passionately about religion and politics while offending no one. Everyone assumed that Arbus was half a step from being a knight, but it was Tel who lived like one. Arbus let the tears come, for what had passed and what would now come to pass. Only the dead knew what was possible. So only the dead knew that a General could still find tears.