Farlander (39 page)

Nico bit into the dried fruit, relishing its smoky sharpness on his tongue. He swallowed some, considering all he had heard.

‘And what is it they call Baracha?’ he asked.

Before Aléas could reply a shadow fell across their laps. Olson stood in the doorway, hands planted on hips.

‘What’s this idling?’ he sneered, taking in the two apprentices lazing on the stable floor. He squinted at Aléas’s bloody lip. ‘And you’ve been fighting, too!’ He bustled towards them in his loose robes, grabbing each by the ear and pulling hard.

‘Up! Up!’ he commanded, yanking them simultaneously to their feet.

The sudden pain was sharp enough to blur Nico’s vision. ‘What do they call Baracha?’ he nevertheless hissed, half bent-over in the grip of Olson’s fingers.

Choking on a mixture of laughter and pain, Aléas managed to reply, ‘Alhazii.’

*

‘What’s going on here?’ bellowed a voice from across the courtyard as Olson hauled them, stumbling, from the stable. It belonged to Baracha, breaking off from his practice session with a great broadsword.

Both young men straightened up instantly, as Olson released them. ‘I caught them lounging about, eating stolen food. They’ve clearly been fighting too.’

‘Is that true, Aléas?’ the Alhazii demanded of his apprentice. ‘You squabble now in the dirt like a child?’

‘Not at all,’ Aléas replied as he wiped the remaining blood from his chin. ‘We were merely practising our short-staff skills. I fear I was a little slow in defending myself.’

‘Just practising?’ The big man took Aléas by the chin, inspecting his wound. Displeased at the sight, he released it. ‘I told you to stay away from this one, and now you see why. Remember, you are training to be R
shun. We do not settle our differences like dogs fighting in the street. If you have a problem with each other, then we must settle it in the proper way.’

Aléas and Nico exchanged apprehensive looks.

‘But we have no problem between us,’ Aléas said with care.

‘What? You have been bled, boy.

‘Yes – and it was but an accident.’

‘It is still an insult!’

‘Master,’ said Aléas, ‘I have hardly been insulted. It was merely sport.’

‘Be quiet, Aléas.’

His apprentice looked to the ground glumly.

‘We must settle this properly,’ repeated Baracha, exchanging a knowing glance with Olson. ‘And we will do it in the old way – you understand, the pair of you?’

Oh no
, thought Nico, not liking the sound of that.

‘A fine idea,’ said Olson with a renewed sparkle in his eyes. ‘I will fetch what they need.’ And he hurried off towards the north wing.

‘What we need?’ echoed Nico, asking of no one in particular.

‘We are going fishing,’ said Aléas with a sigh, his gaze still fixed firmly on the ground.

Fishing?
marvelled Nico, but he knew better than to open his mouth again. Instead he wondered, with a rising panic, what terrible ordeal could lurk behind such an innocent phrase.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘You keep your distance from him, I see,’ Kosh remarked in their native Honshu.

‘I keep my distance from everyone,’ replied Ash, passing his old friend the gourd of Cheem Fire.

Kosh took a drink and returned it. ‘Aye. But particularly from the boy, is what I mean.’

‘It’s best for him that way.’

‘Really? Best for him, or best for you?’

Ash leaned his back against the tree they sat beneath at the edge of the mali forest. He took another mouthful and felt the liquid searing down his throat and into the depths of his stomach. It was an unusually hot day for the mountains of Cheem, so the shade here beneath the leaves of this mali tree was a pleasant relief to the two farlanders. The everyday sounds of the nearby monastery fell into the silence of the valley floor extending before them. The valley itself was reduced to something small and precious by the stark mountains rising all around it: high snow-caps soaring in the distance, the lower slopes closer by speckled with wild goats, and above them the intense blue of the sky, the clouds sailing across it looking flimsier than paper.

Kosh belched. ‘I sent off a letter to his mother, you know,’ he said tightly.

‘Did you read it first?’

A shake of the head. ‘That boy seems a sensitive soul. I hear he keeps himself to himself most of the time.’

‘Perhaps he prefers it that way.’

‘Aye, like his master. I wonder, though. I wonder if he is ready for all of this.’

Ash snorted. ‘Who is ever ready for this?’

‘We were,’ said Kosh.

‘We were soldiers. We had butchered already.’

‘Soldiers or not, we were both cast for this life. When I look at your boy, though, I do not see it in his eyes. He could be a fighter, yes . . . but a hunter, a slayer?’

‘You speak nonsense, Kosh, as you have always spoken nonsense. There is only one thing that counts in this work, in this world even. And it’s that which he has most of all.’

‘A handsome mother in need of stiff action?’

Ash raised his chin. ‘He has heart,’ he replied.

For a time they sat and gazed out over the bright valley, without speaking. The sunlight was catching itself in the ripples of the river, producing a long, twisting ribbon of silver with reflections of gold. Kosh still had questions on his mind, Ash could tell. The man had been holding them back ever since Ash had first returned to the monastery of Sato with an apprentice in tow.

‘I’m just surprised, that’s all,’ said Kosh at last. ‘I didn’t think to see you with an apprentice after all this time. And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’ His tone changed, became softer. ‘Has time healed, at last?’

Ash looked sidelong at him, the answer in his eyes.

Kosh nodded. His own eyes turned away and squinted into the distance – perhaps seeing his own memories of that day neither of them wished to speak of.

Long ago, Ash had found that he could not bring to mind his son’s face unless he recalled it in those last moments of the boy’s life. It was the irony of memory, he thought: to see clearly only those moments most painful of all.

He could see his son’s features now, more like his mother’s than his own. His son, his battle-squire in training, just fourteen years old, and awkward in his heavy leather half-armour, carrying the spare spears and with the water bags hanging from him. The boy struggling towards him over the dying men and corpses scattered on their position, on a small hill to the far left of the main battle line, tripping in blind fear. Ash’s words were lost in the deafening tumult of the fighting that raged around them. His son’s young face suddenly gone white as he turned back towards the steaming cavalry thundering into the rear of their tattered ranks without warning. Men of General Tu’s, their own men of the People’s Army, gone over to the side of the overlords in exchange for a fortune in gold.

Ash had realized in that moment that the battle was lost to them. He had known too that his son was dead even before a rider swept low in his saddle and hacked his blade against the boy’s neck, taking his head clean off in one blow . . . so that one moment the boy was there, the next only a horror to be relived in the mind forever afterwards, a thing falling lifeless, to be lost amongst the other dead on the field.

Ash would have gone berserk if Kosh, and his own squire, had not clubbed the strength from him and dragged him away from the boy’s body and out of the fray, their entire left flank already scattering like seedsails on the wind. From Osh
’s position the signal for retreat waved unnoticed, for it was already a full rout. As they fell back through one of the ravines cutting across the field of action, the general had placed himself and his bodyguard in the path of the main body of horse pursuing them, and there fought a stubborn retreat while the rest of his men, three thousand or so, ran without heed for anything else but their skins.

At the time, most had thought themselves lucky to escape alive. But Ash had never considered it so.

A bell was now ringing. It might have been ringing for some minutes before either of them paid heed to it.

Ash and Kosh stirred and looked back towards the monastery.

‘Is it breakfast?’

‘We had breakfast two hours ago.’

‘So what is it, I wonder?’

But Ash had already risen, beckoning Kosh after him with a jerk of his head.

*

Nico stood with a growing self-consciousness as the bell continued clamouring, while the assorted men of the monastery gathered in the courtyard around them. No one had asked for the bell to be rung – neither Olson nor Baracha – but another R
shun, his name unknown to Nico, upon seeing what was about to take place, had grinned and set himself the task of beckoning everyone to witness the afternoon’s sport.

Every R
shun in the monastery seemed to have turned out in the open space. Since it was a Foolsday, and was their day off, they stood chattering and laughing, the warmth of the late-summer sun drawing easy smiles.

Aléas stood ten steps away, with Baracha hissing in his ear. The young man appeared no happier about their present circumstances than was Nico.

Just then, Ash came striding through the gateway with Kosh by his side, the two walking with the careful gait of men who were already somewhat drunk.
Wonderful
, thought Nico.
Now I get to make a fool of myself in front of the old man too
.