Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (25 page)

Had they planned it together, he and Barmael, that first night Calfaer approached him? How convenient it was, that there were no other Brasnians in the camp to say that there was no such thing as ‘ill-wishing’ in their culture. Still, Calfaer had paid a high price for his homecoming. Soraya was happy for him, though she knew she would miss his company.

On the morning when the cart train in which Calfaer would travel was ready to set off, Soraya went to bid him farewell.

It was already a breathlessly hot day, with a brassy taste in the air that Soraya knew meant clouds were gathering over the sea. The first of the summer thunderstorms would arrive late today. Soraya hoped the cart train would have reached shelter by then, for Calfaer was in no condition for a drenching.

He hobbled out of the surgeon’s building, walking on his own, though he moved as slowly and stiffly as an old man, and the carter had to help him into the cart.

Soraya waited till his breathing eased before she approached. “I came to wish you well,” she said. “Though I know you’ll be well, where you’re going.”

“I will indeed,” said Calfaer. His face was tight and pale with pain, but the satisfaction had changed to an incandescent joy, as clear to Soraya’s senses as a shout of triumph. “Though I’ll miss you, my girl. Be . . . Take care.”

Be careful.
How much of Soraya’s story had he guessed? It didn’t matter, for she knew he would never tell anyone.

A clerk hauled a chest of documents up to the cart. “Io, it’s hot already! What’s it going to be like this afternoon, if it’s this hot now?”

It might well be raining, at least by evening.

The carter snorted. “It’d be less hot if you just brought the scrolls I need, instead of lugging the whole chest around.”

“Think I don’t know that? But it’s even hotter in the record room. The candles are melting! Well, they’re getting squishy. And the windows there are so cursed small you can barely see to read, even in broad daylight. Besides, most of these are yours anyway. I hope you’ve got a document box.”

The carter had to move several bundles to extract the document box from under his seat, but eventually he got it out and the clerk unlocked the chest and started sorting scrolls—dispatches, supply requests, accounts. Soraya would have spoken with Calfaer, but he was watching the clerk with a curious intensity.

“And travel orders for the slave,” the clerk finished. “He’s going all the way to L’dron, so you’ll have to pass him off to another cart train in the capital, but it’s all here, with proper authorization.” He handed over a final scroll, and some of
the tension eased out of Calfaer’s shoulders.

“Did you doubt?” a soft voice behind Soraya rumbled. She jumped, then stepped aside. How could a man as big as Barmael move so quietly?

Calfaer, perched on the cart, looked down at the man he considered a traitor. “No. I didn’t doubt.”

“Then good Sunhigh to you,” said Barmael. His voice was placid, his face expressionless as usual. The carter, knowing nothing of the story that lay between them, paid no attention—and the clerk, who did, probably took it for irony, or some barbarian insult. But Soraya, remembering that Sunhigh was a time of gift giving as well as sacrifice, held her breath. Barmael had sacrificed the respect of men like Reevus and the surgeon, to give this gift.

“A good Sunhigh to you too . . . sir.” Calfaer’s voice was soft, and ironic. It might be taken for either a final defiance, or an admission of defeat. Soraya knew that he had called a man not fit to keep his father’s pigs “sir,” and he had meant it. Her eyes were wet.

The carter, caring less about good-byes than his schedule, goaded the ox into motion. The cart
lurched away, making Calfaer wince. It would be a long journey, Soraya thought, and painful at first, but he would make it. She stood and waved until buildings hid the cart from sight. When she looked around, Barmael had gone, and the clerk was reloading his chest.

“Can I be helping carry that, sir?” Soraya asked, as a humble kitchen girl should. Especially a kitchen girl who never passed up a chance to peek into the small building where the records were stored.

She had never been allowed inside—no one was, except for authorized personnel, which didn’t include curious servants. But it seemed that the heat melted rules as well as tallow candles. When she and the clerk puffed up to the small, covered porch that sheltered the door, each carrying one end of the heavy chest, the guard simply unlocked the door to let them pass.

“Over here.” The clerk steered them into a corner where they laid the chest on top of several others. “Io, this place is hotter than an oven.”

“That’s maybe because the windows are small,” said Soraya in her best ignorant-country-girl accent. “There’s lots of records in here, aren’t
there?” She scanned the boxes as closely as she dared. Her fingers itched to pry into them.

“And Marcellus will skin me if I get them out of order,” said the clerk. He took a small box from a cabinet, opened it, and dropped in the key. It clanked as if there were other keys there, and Soraya’s eyes widened. She looked down hastily, peering through her hair as the clerk replaced the box and closed the cabinet. “Thank you, lass. Let’s get out where it’s cooler.”

He didn’t seem to expect a reply, as he guided her out of the record room—which was good, for Soraya wasn’t sure she could have controlled her voice. She knew where the keys to the chests were kept! All she had to do was to get into the building—the locked, guarded building—and find and translate the right records. Soraya had been watching this building for months; the door was always guarded, but the windows weren’t.

Of course, they’d deliberately made the windows small, too small for a grown man to climb through them. But a slender girl might manage it, if there was something going on to distract the guard from any small noises she made. Something like the first summer thunderstorm, which would
probably arrive tonight. Soraya shivered. She had seen a man flogged for disrespect, just a few days ago. She didn’t dare imagine what the Hrum might do if they caught her. But now she knew where the keys were. This was her first chance to get her hands on those records. Her best chance. She would try it tonight.

M
ONTHS WENT BY,
and Mazad’s walls held fast, so the Hrum became impatient and decided to send more troops. Then the governor of Mazad, once more grown fearful, sent a message to Sorahb. “The Hrum are sending a great force to overwhelm us. It is time for you to fulfill your promise, and come to our aid.”

Sorahb was sorely torn, for he knew his soldiers were not as skilled as the Hrum, but he had given his oath to assist the governor in time of need. The honor of the Farsalan army was at stake, so Sorahb led them to Mazad.

“Fear nothing,” he told his men, as Azura’s sun illuminated the trampled plain and the Hrum’s mighty host. “The Hrum are skilled, but they fight only for pay, at the
command of their officers—their true hearts are not here. But we are fighting for our families and our homes, and mere mercenaries can never defeat such men.”

Sorahb’s soldiers cheered, and Sorahb’s sword flashed in the new sun as he raised it. Then Sorahb himself led the first charge against the Hrum camp.

All that day the battle raged. At first the Hrum were surprised, so advantage fell to Sorahb’s peasant army. But soon the Hrum’s superior experience asserted itself, and they were able to hold their ground. Yet Sorahb’s army outnumbered them, and as Sorahb had told them, they fought for their homes, so they fought strongly if not well, and refused to be defeated.

The charge Sorahb led against the Hrum camp was the first of many. Time and again he led his forces against the Hrum’s formation, felling the soldiers who guarded the Hrum commander like a scythe, almost killing the Hrum commander himself on more than one occasion. His soldiers, watching, marveled at his skill, and were further heartened by their young commander’s courage.

But in the end the Hrum were too skilled, too experienced to be defeated. Sunset drenched the battlefield in light the color of blood, and Sorahb saw that for all they had accomplished, his army could not win. He signaled for
retreat, and the Hrum were glad to see them go and did not pursue them.

But later, when the count of the wounded and the slain had been tallied, Sorahb found he had lost a full third of his men to death or capture, and many more were wounded and would not be able to fight again for a long time, if ever. Though he knew they had hurt the Hrum most sorely, it was not enough to break the siege. And he realized that more Hrum troops would be sent out, and then more, and more, until sooner or later, Mazad would fall.

“So I am forsworn perforce,” Sorahb whispered. “And these men I have trained and led to their deaths, have died for nothing. How could I be so mad, so vain, as to think I could lead peasants to defeat this army when they had defeated deghans already? The fault is mine.”

Unable to bear the sight of the misery he had caused, Sorahb abandoned his army, and fled into the darkness.

T
HE STORM’S FIRST FURY
had eased, but rain still pounded on the kitchen’s roof, noisy enough to drown far louder sounds than Soraya made as she slipped a few things into a sack and made a quiet exit. Not that she feared waking the other servants, who slept on the floor beside her—if anyone woke, she would say she was going to visit the privy. If anyone noticed the amount of time she was gone, she would say that after so much heat, the rain had tempted her into going for a walk. It should ring true—if she hadn’t had other plans for the night, Soraya might have done just that, for she had always loved storms. Until tonight.

Unrolling her pallet on the floor, trying to behave normally, Soraya had sensed the storm hovering out at sea, the dark clouds boiling over the stars, the rising wind that sang in her blood. The humming tension that preceded lightning.

Hours had passed, and the storm stubbornly refused to approach land. It happened sometimes, especially with the first storms of the season. They spent all their power at sea, trapping the fisherfolk in their docks, cursing the landsmen with heat and bad tempers, without the cooling relief of rain. But Soraya needed it to arrive tonight!

Storms resonated with her shilshadu as nothing else did, not even fire, but the last time she had opened herself to a storm the lightning had come seeking her, and only her sudden panic had pushed it away to strike elsewhere. When you opened your shilshadu to fire it wouldn’t harm you—Soraya wasn’t at all sure the same was true of lightning.

Lying in the warm darkness of the kitchen, surrounded by the servants’ peaceful snores, Soraya had opened her shilshadu to the storm. It rushed to fill her, vast and careless, dancing with delight at its own power. For a time Soraya’s
spirit danced with it—it was all she could do to remember that she was a human thing, to summon human will and try to persuade the storm to come toward her. For all its might the storm’s shilshadu was thin, eluding her will as if she was trying to catch mist in her hands. A headache grew behind her eyes, and sweat rolled down her still body. When the storm, ever so slowly, started toward land, Soraya wasn’t certain if her own will was moving it, or if it had finally decided to come on its own. Once she was sure it would continue in the direction she had chosen, she sighed with relief and released it.

But the storm wouldn’t let her shilshadu go. Soraya’s heart began to pound. She had pulled her spirit back into herself, well contained in flesh and bone, but she still sensed the storm’s shilshadu, fixed on her, seeking its dance partner.

Soraya sat up in bed, no longer caring if she woke the others. She pinched herself, hoping pain would center her spirit in her flesh sufficiently that the storm would lose its hold. She banned all thought of magic from her mind, anchoring herself in her body alone.

Perhaps it had worked—perhaps it was only
her awareness of the link that had dimmed. All she knew for certain was that the leading edge of the storm had crashed over the Hrum camp like the wrath of Kanarang. Soraya wasn’t the only one who cowered in her bed in terror of the lightning.

Eventually the violence of the storm front passed on. The other servants, grumbling, had resettled themselves for sleep. Now the thunder only rumbled in the distance, and the lightning was an even more distant frisson at the edge of her sensing as she crept out of the kitchen. Only the rain remained, pelting through her hair in thick, wet drops, turning the dusty streets to mud, and keeping everyone but the night watch snug in their quarters.

She would never have a better chance.

Soraya had been scouting the positions where the sentries were posted for months now. It took a little extra time, especially in the rainy darkness, to make her way to the back of the record room without encountering anyone, but it was far from impossible.

Barrels had been placed at the corners of many buildings to catch the clean rainwater, and Soraya crouched beside one, listening for any
sound that could make itself heard over the soft rush of rain. For a long time she heard nothing. She weighed the stupidity of going close enough for the guard to see her against her need to know that he was where she thought he was. Before impatience lured her into foolishness, she heard the small clanks of metal on metal that accompanied the movement of armed-and-armored men.