The Seventh Friend (Book 1) (58 page)

“I know of no one who is worse,” he grinned suddenly. “Can’t you see it, man? The lad thinks you are a hero, one of the two Avilian commanders who did well out of this.”

“A hero?” The word seemed alien to Skal. Heroes were people in tales, usually dead people. Was he a hero? Was Arbak a hero? No, he’d been on the wall with other men just as brave, who’d fought just as well. The credit was given to him because it had been his place to give orders, and things had worked out his way.

“It’s what he thinks,” Feran said. “And the general already has those around him who see to his wants. You should have the same, but use him well, Skal.”

“I’ve no desire to mistreat the boy,” Skal said.

“So I believe. He will be loyal if you are kind to him.”

Tilian Henn put an end to their conversation by returning with two steaming mugs of tea which he handed to each of them, and then produced a plate, and carefully unpacked two golden honey cakes onto it. Skal exchanged a look with Feran.

“I would almost credit the tea,” he said, looking at the boy, “but you have definitely not had the time to bake biscuits.” He sipped the tea, and it was very good, flavoured with honey and herbs, better than anything he had tasted in the mess tent.

“I hope that you will pardon me, my lord,” the boy said. “But I do not know how to make tea, or not a brew that would be fit for a lord, so I had someone else make it, and the biscuits were already made, so I borrowed two.”

Feran chuckled again.

“You
borrowed
two? The tea is good; very good. Who did you get to make it for you?”

“A man called Bargil, my lord.”

Feran laughed again. “You got the General’s Dragon to make tea for you? Gods Skal this man is worth a king’s ransom!”

“And he promised to show me how to make tea the way he does it, my lord,” Tilian said.

Skal knew Bargil. He didn’t know him well, but well enough to know that the man was not so approachable. He had a bark and a bite.

“Why would Bargil do so much for you, Tilian? Are you married to his sister?”

“I told him it was for you, my lord.”

Bargil had agreed to show Tilian how to make tea on his account? It was possible, he supposed, but it seemed as likely as catching a fish with a short end of rope.

“Bargil, the fearless, limping, ex dragon guard Bargil is going to teach you how to make tea because you said it was for me?”

“He thinks highly of you, my lord.” But there was something else. The boy had turned quite red in the face and was looking at his boots again.

“What did he say?” Skal demanded. “Exactly what did he say?”

“With all respect, my lord, I’d rather not repeat his exact words.”

Skal could hear Feran chuckling again, but inside him there was rising resentment. How dare a sergeant, an ex-sergeant of a foreign power show disrespect? “Tell me,” he said.

Tilian’s gaze was fixed on his boots and his voice was barely audible. “He said that you would make a damn fine officer one day, once you got the stick out of your arse.”

Feran roared with approval. “You shouldn’t ask if you don’t want to know, Skal,” he said. Skal himself felt the heat of anger inside him, the resentment, the pride, the cursed fragile pride that made him… that made him…

It all drained away, the anger and indignation, and he felt his lips stretch into a smile, and then before he could think of his dignity he was laughing, too, laughing so hard that it hurt. He managed to put the tea down without spilling it and rolled back in his seat, slapping his thighs. It lasted less than a minute, and when he was calm again, or calm enough, he picked up the tea and sipped it.

“Damn fine tea,” he said. It set them off again, both Feran and Skal, laughing like hyenas. “Tilian Henn,” he said when he had his breath back. “You have the job, and the pay is four florins a week, and never, ever lie to me.”

Later that night he thought he might have been a bit generous, caught up in the moment. It had felt like a release of some kind; like a prison door opening. What did it really matter what Tane Bargil said? The man was a real soldier, or had been. Even such a backhanded compliment from such a man was an endorsement that others would heed. Pride was nothing. Pride was three parts a traitor.

He had orders. He would ride back to Bas Erinor with Arbak and what remained of the Seventh Friend. That was less than fifteen hundred men, but those men were veterans now, and even better, they were undefeated veterans. He would be a colonel with a full regiment at his command, and he was wise enough to know that their victory at the Green Road had not ended the war. Spring would come, and the whole thing would begin again. For the first time he wondered if that was what he wanted.

It was curiosity that drove Arbak to Waterhill. Just a couple of hours ride along the King’s highway, he’d been told, and it is yours; yours and your children’s’ for as long as your line exists. But Arbak had no line. He had no children and no wife and he was the wrong side of forty years. So it was that he came to Waterhill, looking at the place as no more than a loan from the Duke, who would doubtless receive it back when he died.

Arbak was tactician enough to know that Seth Yarra would attack again in the spring, and that they would probably not try the wall again. Their Telan allies would have told them that there was a better way, that there was a pass through the Dragon’s Back with no high wall to defend it: The White Road.

Nobody used the White Road. It connected the forest realm with the great plain and it was well within the lands given over by Pelion to his Benetheon. No man would dare to so anger the gods by trying it, except Seth Yarra. They cared nothing for the laws of Benetheon gods.

It was impassable in winter. Snow lay fifty feet thick for most of its length, driven there by north west winds that brought the chill of the frozen lands with them, packing snow and ice tight, but too loose still for wagons and feet to pass. Spring, however, brought a thaw. It did not come quickly, but a month or six weeks shy of summer the road would be muddy and passable, and nothing short of an open confrontation would stop them coming through.

He rode in silence, then, along the road to Waterhill. Sheyani was with him, and he had left Bargil in charge of the tavern. The place would not be as popular as it had been under the spell of Sheyani’s pipes, but his new found notoriety would ensure that it continued to be a source of whatever funds he might need. Already the money he had accumulated dwarfed the colonel’s salary that sat, undrawn, in the kingdom’s accounts, and that was a gold guinea a week.

The tavern was in better shape than he had expected to find on his return. His other staff had kept it clean and warm, and mostly open. It was quieter, of course. A lot of his regular customers, at least most of those of the requisite age, had signed up to serve with the regiment, and he had left a lot of them back on the green road, feeding the grass.

All he had ever wanted was a comfortable retirement. Maybe a small tavern, or even a share in one; a place where he could grow old and grumpy getting disgracefully drunk when he felt like it, always having plenty of food, a warm bed and company. Strange how what you want and what you get rarely seem to be on speaking terms.

They came at last to the gates. He thought there must be some mistake. Two great stone pillars straddled a well made track like trunkless legs. Wrought iron gates barred the way. They were as high as a mounted man’s head and wide enough that a standard wagon could pass through with ten feet to spare either side. They looked like palace gates, and beyond them the track twisted away through grand old trees, passed by a small lake, and in the distance he could see the colours of brick and stone through the bare winter branches.

“This is it?” he asked.

One of their party was a groom, sent from Waterhill to guide his new master. The man bobbed his head.

“Yes, my lord.”

It seemed too grand by far, but if the man said this was it…

“Well, get the gate open, then,” he said.

The groom jumped down and unlatched the gate, taking a few moments to swing each half back and rest it against a post placed there for the purpose, latching it into its new position. When he was done he remounted hurriedly, apparently surprised that Arbak was waiting for him.

They rode on, hooves sounding crisp on the gravel track. They passed beneath a family of great oaks; their branches spread above the path, each tree with a girth as great as a man’s outstretched arms. Then the landscape opened up, and they rode by the side of a lake. Ducks flew up in confusion as they approached, making for the far side of the water where they skidded into the lake again, ploughing little wakes and rousing their feathers and shouting loudly to each other. Beyond the ducks and the lake shore he could see several houses, ploughed fields, and a barn. It was a pretty enough scene. All this? All this was his?

They rounded another great tree; an elm, he thought; passed a stand of conifers, and then came in clear sight of the house for the first time. It was big, and it was untidy looking, and it was probably the most beautiful dwelling he had ever seen. It looked as though it had been built by a hundred different builders across a span of five hundred years. Brick chased stone chased brick all around its walls. In places it was two storeys high, and in places only one. At the west end a tower rose a full four floors from the ground. Over the years a vine of some sort had wrapped itself around the tower and spread out to seize much of the building’s front in its green hands, softening the structure, making it look as though it belonged.

Arbak stopped and stared. Sheyani drew her mount up next to his.

“A house fit for a lord,” she said. There was laughter in her voice again.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It does not matter if I like it, Sheshay. It is your house.” She paused, and seeing that he needed something more, said “but I do like it. It is a fine old house.”

He nodded, and nudged his horse forwards again. They had been spotted, and he could see men and women in front of the house, coming out of the great arched door. They lined up on the gravel before the house, standing in rank like soldiers waiting to greet their commander. He decided to play the part, uncomfortable as it felt, and reined in a few yards before them, swinging down from the saddle and handing his horse to the groom, who, he noted, had managed to dismount after him and still be at his side to take the reins when they were offered.

One of the servants stepped forwards and bowed, and this triggered a wave of obeisance from the line, as though a wind had passed through a bed of reeds.

“I am Hector Talanisant, your steward, if it please you, my lord,” he said.

Arbak pulled off his riding gloves, beating the dust out of them against his hip, taking his time to reply. “By your accent an Afaeli,” he said.

“I am Afaeli by birth, my lord,” the man said. “Does my accent displease you?”

Power. He had that kind of power now. This man had probably spent a good part of his life, and he looked about forty, working his way up to this position, and yet he could be broken and thrown away at Arbak’s word.

“It does not, Hector. Do your job well and you shall keep it.”

Hector bowed, and he could see the relief on his face, a release of tension.

“Who is the best man to show me around the estate, Hector?” he asked.

And so it began. They ate a lunch that was over large at a table more suited to twenty than two. It felt like trying to row a boat with a twenty foot beam. There was enough food left on the table at the end to feed the entire staff, and perhaps that was the point. Hector deposited them in the care of a man he called the landskeeper, whom Arbak concluded was the person who both managed the farms and looked after the gardens and woodland. He took them on a tour that in the end revealed remarkably little. It was not, perhaps, the grand estate he had envisioned, and he recalled the Duke telling him that it was only two hundred acres.

There were two farms – the water farm and the hill farm; hence the given name of the estate. The former was low lying and grew wheat, and the hill farm bred animals; which mostly seemed to be large, black cows, though he saw pigs and chickens on both properties. Both farms were well kept and tidy as far as his ignorant soldier’s eye could tell. He was given to understand that one tenth of the produce of each farm went into the estate larder, and the bulk of the rest was sold or traded by the farmers, and a further rent was paid out of the sum raised. The lake was full of fish, and only the lord’s household had a right to them. In addition to the two farms there was a six acre garden around the house, and a thirty acre woodland that provided firewood for the house and the farms as well as the odd game bird for the table.

Arbak rejected the idea of eating their evening meal at the great table, and Hector suggested the parlour, a smaller and more intimate room. It had been a long time since Waterhill had been a principal estate, and there was no rhythm to the house, no pattern or template of routine to fall back on. He liked the parlour. It reminded him of one of the private rooms in the Seventh Friend, but there was a wall of books as well, and he wondered whose they were and what they said.

When Hector brought their food and poured the wine Arbak dismissed him.

“I can call you if I want anything,” he said.

“There is a bell, my lord,” Hector said.

“A bell?”

“Yes, my lord. The black rope to the left of the fireplace. If you pull it a bell will ring in the kitchen and someone will come to see what you need.”

He nodded. “I’ll ring the bell, then.”

Hector withdrew and Arbak pushed his food around the plate. He wasn’t very hungry after the vast meal at mid day. He sipped his wine.

“I don’t know how to live in a house like this, Sheyani,” he said.

“You will learn, Sheshay,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not the things, not the bell and the table and all the rest. I don’t know how to speak to these people.”

“You’re afraid that they will discover that you are just a man like them.”

“I suppose so.”

“They already know this. They are servants, Sheshay. You are their lord. A part of what they are comes from what you are. They are pleased to have a lord again, not to be a forgotten part of the Duke’s holdings, and they have already seen that you are fair and interested. They want to like you, and if you do not dismiss them, cut their pay or have them whipped they will like you well enough. If you are thoughtful, they will like you more.”

“So what do I do?”

“Whatever you like. This is your house. These men and women are no different from your barmen, your brewer, and the men who keep the door at the Seventh Friend.”

“This house, though; it is too big.”

“Then fill it, Sheshay. Invite your merchant friends to stay with you for a few days. If I know anything about such men I know that they will be most pleased to be the guest of a lord, even one that they knew before he was raised up. Many would pay to be permitted to come and stay.”

“Really?”

“It is true. A bloodline is a kind of gold that you can spend over and over. I have seen it before, in Durandar. In my country everyone aspires to become a mage, and those that have succeeded are courted by those who never will. Money is drawn to high blood like a lodestone to a steel blade.”

“Yes, I have seen it.”

He had seen it and he did not like it. Everywhere he had been it was true that money respected blood, but some men took it further, sought out the favour of the high born and the raised up, and flattered them with gifts and praise. He did not like to think that those he had called friends would be so debased.

“Hector said that we had neighbours,” he said. “Do you think it would be prudent to become acquainted with them?”

“Yes, but custom dictates that it is they who must take the first step. They will invite you to their homes. It would be thought improper for you to invite them.”

“How do you know this, Sheyani? You are a Durander.”

“It is the same in all the five kingdoms, Sheshay. The bloodlines of the kingdoms are more kin to each other than they are to the common people. They have the same rules. They play the same games.”

“I am glad that I have you by my side to tell me these things, Sheyani,” he said. “Otherwise I would seem a fool.”

Sheyani did not reply, but she smiled and quickly set about her food again.

When night came he could not sleep. His room, the master’s room, was vast, and the servants had lit it with twelve lamps. In truth it was two rooms – a dressing room almost as large as the parlour and a bed chamber – and he felt like he was sleeping in a barn. He spent some minutes examining the furniture and the books, and discovered that the furniture was solid and the books were old. He found a copy of the Tales of Karim, and after he had doused all but one of the lamps he read through two of his favourite tales, hoping that the familiar words would bring sleep, but they did not. Instead he lay awake trying to understand what had happened to his life.