Paksworld

I am not a professional in etymology or linguistics or languages overall…BUT we did manage to afford the  Compact OED* way, way, WAY back when it was new(ish) and used to use it for (among many other things including research) playing Scrabble with friends.  OED Scrabble was a lot of fun, if slow enough to allow two people to play chess on the side.   And back in those days I could read the OED without a magnifying glass or glasses by putting my nose maybe half a centimeter above the paper, at which point the tiny print was in focus.  ANYway.   I now need reading glasses and the magnifying glass that came with the set.

*OED Oxford English Dictionary.  I always yearned to own the full version but it was and undoubtedly is still, incredibly expensive in its full expanse.**

** I had to look it up.  20 volumes, 4 feet of shelf space, $1,215 from Amazon.  That’s new.  What have I got I could discard to gain four feet of shelf space?   There’s not another place in the house to put another bookshelf.  Certainly not the 2013 Britannica.  Or the 1950 Britannica.  Not any of the nonfiction; that’s my personal research library.   (Looking with narrowed eyes at the fiction shelves.  How much of that am I going to re-read?  Yes, it’s also reference, but…I have just be attacked by a massive lump of book hunger.  And older, not up to date ones aren’t as expensive…there’s a lovely earlier 13 volume version, about what I remember from college.  Used, yes, but very nice, with proper volume covers…YUM.)  Writers need words.  They need to *understand* words, in the depth of time those words have been used.  They need words sitting around them, emitting all the nuances…filling their heads with words…beautiful, sensual, luscious, practically chewable, words.

Yesterday, in conversation with my agent, who had had someone else look at the Horngard ms., it turns out the first question to be answered, from the third person was “What is a paladin?” because all that cane immediately to his mind was Dungeons and Dragons paladins and even a cursory reading on Horngard revealed that nobody in *that* book thought of paladins the way whatisname did (sorry, but the head injuries are playing serious games with name memory today.  I can clearly remember the stuff in the rule books that so infuriated me about the abuse of the paladin concept, but not the name of the man who wrote them…wait…Gary.  Gary something…starts with G also.  Not Geronimo, shorter than that.  Gorgon, Griffin, Grimaldi….Gary-Gary-Gary…yes, this is a problem.)  By chewing on the old problem of “Why on earth did you write rules that made “lawful good” essentially include “stupid” and why did you let people start at level zero as paladins (and stupid-good) when the actual paladins (there were some) were all experienced and expert fighters??   I was then motivated to go haul out the second (heavy!!) volume of the compact OED and look up the history of the word and see if I’d remembered any of that.

I’d remembered it wrong, OK? But here’s the straight scoop from the Compact OED.  It goes back to Charlemagne’s court.  Now remember–this is post-Western Roman Empire time and Europe was mostly a seething (thinly seething) mass of little realms–Charlemagne (just means Charles the Great) of the Carolingean dynasty (became king of the Franks in 768,, King of the Lombards from 774, and was crowned as the Emperor of the Romans by the Pope Leo III  in 800, and died in 814.)  I regard those dates as…iffy, because of later calendar changes and I don’t know how much slippage was accounted for, but I could be wrong.  8th to 9th century Common Era, anyway.  Who were the Franks and the Lombards?  Funny you should ask.  They *had* been among the invaders who toppled the Western Empire, handily tucked into one or more of the Goths & Vandals tribes.  I happen to have a translation of the Lombard Laws from a pre-Charlemagne period, (like the Burgundian Code I also have a translation of, both of these researched and done by my medieval history prof,  Katharine Fischer Drew, then chair of the History Department of Rice University, may her name be remembered for good scholarship AND being a really good history teacher and administrator.   Both of those legal codes were intentionally modeled on their view of Roman Law (the first codified law either bunch of barbarians had ever seen)  but the difference between the stately and determinedly “universal” approach of the Romans and the decidedly particular and individual approach of these Germanic tribes is both notable and  useful to fiction writers wanting to add a little verisimilitude to their sometimes unconvincing narratives.

Back to Charlemagne.  Because Pope Leo III, wanted to recreate a more stable and uniform Europe (e.g. the Roman Empire),  with Roman Catholics in charge and no more Byzantine invasions and persecutions, he gave Charlemagne the title of Emperor of the Romans, although the actual crowning ceremony occurred in what is now France, not in Rome (Leo III had fled Rome.  It’s a really *lively* period of history which makes clear that interesting times may be interesting but get a lot of people killed, displaced, and wishing for nice boring peace for long enough to raise a family.  Some people are never satisfied–or rather, in any situation some want it to last and some want to change it.  Charlemagne’s father was Pippin (not Tolkein’s Pippin); that’s how Charlemagne inherited the crown of the Franks; his brother had the Lombards but when his brother died, Charlemagne just snagged that crown, ignoring his brother’s heirs.  Nice fellow.  As you can imagine, becoming and staying king, and gaining more meant wars and so Charlemagne as a feudal sovereign had fighting men–good ones, or else–under him.  Specifically twelve peers,  who were “of the palace” (hence, through a couple of spelling wiggles, paladins,  “palace warriors” the paladin title meant, who were directly sworn to him.

From Charlemagne’s court, the term spread with bards, writers, etc. and was helped along by Chretien de Troyes and his tale of Arthur and his Round Table and others.   Suddenly the Matter of Britain got involved.  Then the courtly romances of somewhat later medieval times.  Various other attributes got tacked on to the requirements for paladins (being polite to women, being clean, being pious.  The “parfit gentil knight” thing.  Galahad, not Lancelot.  Oh, and of course the Chanson de Roland was part of it, and even the Welsh poet Taliessin.   In German mythology, as expressed in Wagner’s operas and their preceding legends, the perfect knight might be tangled in pre-Christian mythologies as well.  The term was sometimes used for the exceptionally brave alone but more often for a cluster that included “presentable at a palace” (so the bravest soldier in the army, a terrific fighter, if too rough and cruel…couldn’t be a paladin.  Looking at Charlemagne’s time, this must have been a later addition.)  Courage, fighting ability, courtesy.  Often righting wrongs on his own, a knight errant off doing great things.  Since the Holy Roman Empire included most of Europe at one point, it also included staying within the bounds of Holy Roman Catholicism, and included Spain-to-Germania.  Not, however, Scandinavia. Vikings were immune to the romantic nature of paladins, until later.

My first experience with the word was in stories *about* the middle ages, the knights in shining armor approach.  But a degree in history, most of it ancient & medieval, gave it a lot more dimension…[[Gygax.  That was the guy’s name.  FINALLY.  Gary Gygax.  OK, sorry I couldn’t remember it faster.  The memory isn’t totally gone, it just has an extremely slow name-finding function.]]   Besides Dungeons & Dragons (before that arrived, in fact) but after writers like Scott & Tennyson & the spate of Arthurean fiction that popped up at intervals, there was a TV series called “Have Gun, Will Travel” with a main character names Paladin.  He wore black, carried a gun, shot people, and usually in the course of an episode, righted some wrong or other.  Modern paladin that sort of, but didn’t entirely, sit right with me when I watched it.  Like an unromantic Zorro (yes, I watched that one too.)

Paksworld paladins are based on the older form, as most of you know. However, the intrusion of functional magic in various forms in Paksworld allows paladins to do things that Charlemagne’s palace warriors could not.  Keeping their powers limited and sufficiently different from the magicks of others felt necessary to me, though the ability to light a fire or even a candle from a finger almost tempted me to give paladins “ordinary” magelight.   Nope.  Paks & others get the bright white “reveals the truth” kind of light.  What else?  They can’t be fooled when it comes to good/evil or truth/lies.  They have an innate ability to heal–it’s from their patron saint or a god, and it goes beyond what a Marshal can do.   They can protect others from magical fear (an evil projection from some evil source).  They are charismatic–natural leaders, and leaders for good.   But also they have the skills of expert warriors, including tactical skills developed from years of training & experience.  They are courteous, “presentable at court.”  They are typically active as paladins alone, going out on quests to accomplish an assignment (right a wrong, find a missing king, stop something bad) though they may associate with a crowd trying to do the same thing.  They’re no all alike, and they don’t feel allegiance to exactly the same good powers.  Paks and Dorrin, for instance, came from very different backgrounds (as did Gird and Falk).   Aris and Seri, the two young paladin figures in Liar’s Oath, one of them born Old Human and one of them born magelord, leading the most vulnerable people of Luap’s kingdom down-canyon and away, hoping to get them back to Fintha…were fully paladins and connected to the old high gods of Old Aare, Sunlord and Sealord and Windlord.  They had known Gird personally…they were “his children” nonbiologically but not “his” paladins.

It’s all perfectly clear now, right?  My rough-and-ready telling here didn’t buck you off into the mud, did it?

This week I finished (for now, anyway) a Paksworld story that does not involve any swords, any fighting, anything (as some would say) exciting.    But Paksworld, though founded on adventures of the military sort, is a bigger world than that.  Behind every military society is its nourishing civilian root system.   Even the nomadic tribes of Central Asia, even the ones who trained girls as warriors and considered a young woman marriageable only when she proved brave enough to kill, had a civilian root that kept the warriors alive from birth until they qualified, and fed them and clothed them afterward.  Somebody cared for the herds, trained the horses, tanned the hides that made the leather armor, made the saddles and bridles and bits.  Somebody milked the mares and sheep or cattle, made the cheese, ground the grain for meal or flour to make the noodles or dumplings.

The big civilizations in our world depended on agriculture, yes…but also on trade.  No one place had every useful mineral:to make bronze, you need copper and tin both.  Traders came to ancient Britain for tin.  So in Paksworld, resources are distributed unevenly…and as a result expertise is distributed unevenly.  A maritime culture must have an abundant source of wood…and something you can make sails from…the kind of sail material affects the sails you can make from it, how heavy they are (and thus how they stress the wood they’re hung from.)   A horse-using culture must have an abundance of grass nutritious for horses and terrain they an run on.  If you want a society that uses wheels, be sure you provide them with what it takes to make useful wheels in both simple and more advanced forms.

In this story, “Bank Transfer,” the setting is in the most advanced human culture that invented world has: Aarenis.  It has cities and towns with quite competent stone and wood buildings.  It knows how to mine, refine, and fashion tools and weapons of steel (though stone blades are not unknown, just always considered old and rare.)   Its trade networks span much of the continent, with regular movement of food, raw materials, manufactured goods from place to place, and local manufacture of goods in most towns and cities.   Its monetary system is unified across Aarenis by the Guild League, the association of most occupational guilds to form a strong political and economic force, and intersects with other monetary systems by clearly understood exchanges under the authority of the Moneychangers Guild.  For the registered members, paper exchange has been replacing  (at least for short terms) the movement of physical coinage.   A letter of credit between a bank in the South and one in the North allows a loosening of supply during the winter, when no physical travel is possible.  In the near term and close by, a banker can issue a draught–a letter–to one of its depositors, and it functions like one of our paper checks used to…the bank and the gulld its member bank belongs to guarantees payment.  The process itself is different: a draught for, say, 100 natas (a large sum)  is carried by the bank customer, and will be annotated with the amounts due to as many merchants as it takes to use up the amount, with their signature.  It’s normal for a draught to be in use only within a set time (1-3 days is common)  and for a set number of recipients, within one city.  It saved the customer having to walk around with a large, thief-tempting, amount of coinage.   And it’s useless to thieves, unless they’ve killed the customer and stolen their seal, which is stamped on each annotation on the draught, as well as the merchant who collects from the bank.

So in this story a woman in her early thirties is a trader–a sutler, a supplier to the military, any military.  She’s near the bottom of the sutler hierarchy: she has only one wagon, she’s not as busy as she wants.  Her father was a one-wagon trader; her grandfather came to Valdaire with a pushcart, selling whatever he could, often rags.  She and her blind sister live in a building she inherited, along with the business, about 12 years ago when her father died.  She and her sister live in one room of that building (she has rented out the rest, except for part of the ground floor and cellar, where she stores what she sells and the horses that pull the wagon)  and her life is tightly constrained by her responsibilities and the effect of a theft shortly after her father died.  She’s working hard, but not making progress toward an easier life.  When opportunity appears, she must not only choose between risk and opportunity, but convince her banker–and others–that she is capable of turning opportunity into actual profit.  (It is not an accident that I see her in her early thirties…my mother was thirty-two when she fled from an unsafe marriage and traveled almost 2000 miles (it may have been more, given the old roads back then) and started a new life as a mother, after I was born.  Grethna isn’t pregnant, has never been married, but the journey she undertakes has distinct echoes, to me.)  What Grethna has is the stolid kind of courage that persists and persists and persists.  How will she deal with her banker, who still thinks of her as a mere girl?   How will she deal with this opportunity that beckons but demands abilities she’s not sure she has?

The story has major spoilers for the book that’s Horngard I (I hope someday in reality!)  and thus can’t reasonably be published until I find out whether Horngard I will be published, and wait out its birthing.  Meanwhile I’ll be thinking about whether Grethan is thickening into character who might generate enough plot for a full book, or a longer piece.  Why not just write that?  Because Horngard I needs to come first.  I started this story right after the faceplant, when I had the quite reasonable fear that this new head injury might permanently put me back to “no longer able to write.”  I knew I wouldn’t know the full extent of the concussion’s damage for at least two months, maybe more, because that’s how long it takes to assess  a repeat concussion.  What you get the week right after isn’t the full story….things could get worse or better.  So I started a story intended to be fairly simple and short, as a test: can I still “round” a plot to a conclusion, and tighten it into a good solid, satisfying knot.  After the 2018 concussion, I couldn’t.  Not for years.  I’ve done that now, and my two best first-readers agree.

However, it was not an easy task, and  I can tell the concussion has left residual damage.  It will take longer to work it all out and see how much, but…at least I can write a short, relatively simple, piece.   Now to write another, about something else.  I wouldn’t mind being stuck in Paksworld for the rest of my life, but I’d like the ability to switch back to SF occasionally if I can.  The two types seemed to generate stories for each other 20 years ago.   Only way to know is to start something short there, too.

However again, when it’s not past bedtime on a hot summer night in Texas, I will hunt up a snippet of Horngard I  as soon as I can.  You deserve it.

Third However….Sharon Lee & Steve Miller have a new book Liaden Universe book coming out, SALVAGE RIGHT, and it’s a fast-moving fascinating book.   Science Fiction with autonomous self-aware ships and space stations, characters that include many-times-reborn not-exactly clones, Liadens, Terrans, persons not easily defined, spies embedded in rescue organizations, wheels with wheels within weirdness, the Uncle’s unsociable sister, mysterious holdovers from a previous universe, a norbear, instances of Korval’s Tree, and much, much, more.  We finally see the end (I hope!) of the old Tinsori Light, but not the end of the Lyre Institute for Exceptional Children, alas.

Another talk with my agent last week, and I had new things to work on (which is fine, though of course I’d prefer to write absolutely perfect books up front.)  One thing he couldn’t explain clearly enough, except that one character’s sections did not work for him…and I kept looking at them and looking at them, and finally…in a “scales falling from the eyes” moment tonight, there it was.  An absolutely plain as mud and about as interesting lump of  infodump masquerading as an interesting look inside a major character’s thinking processes.

All informative.  All static.   No reader should have to read that many pages of Gwenno reviewing her reasons for doing something.  Was it accurate?  Yes, that’s how she thinks and what she thinks.  Are some of those points plot relevant?  Yes, as showing motivation.  But do we need them laid out in order like a plot summary?  No, we do not.   WHY couldn’t I have seen that months ago when I first wrote it?  (I was having a lot of fun just writing…)

Said it before and I’m saying it again…if you’re writing ANYTHING and you start thinking “If I can just make it until the next interesting/fun/exciting/ bit…that’s the part to change or just delete.”   Gwenno deserves to have her POV sections bouncy and energetic and determined as she is, not pages of her thought processes.

Part X

One evening, coming out of the daily conference, Duke Marrakai asked Kieri to walk with him.  “The lad’s different.  I thought he’d sulk and complain and you have him smiling and cheerful.”

“He’s a good boy,” Kieri said.

“Sometimes,” the Duke said.  “And sometimes I’ve wanted to put a knot on his head.  You have no children, yet, do you?”

“No, but I watched Aliam Halveric and his wife with theirs, and I remember them with me.  I ignored your lad’s sulks and treated him as a sensible person, which he’s turned out to be.  I’m going to put him back on his horse tomorrow.”

“Well.  You should have a horse.  You ride very well and you know horses. And apparently, boys.”

“I will have again someday.  Someday, I want one of your breeding.  That horse is the best I’ve ridden.  Aliam had a halfbred of yours.  Tell me, what do you charge for the fullbred colts?”

The Duke looked at him squarely.  “They don’t come cheap.”

“No good horse does, but by accident. I will have one someday, and you can tell it will be treated well.”

“Indeed.  The Prince says he’s thinking of giving you that barren mess up north as a grant, if you do well in this campaign and another one or two.  No one else has wanted it, at any price or reward.”

“It would suit me,” Kieri said.  “In time it would thrive, with good management.  Hard at the start, of course, but are not the best horses often those difficult to train well early on?”

“You are not afraid of challenges.”

Kieri laughed.  “No, my lord, I am not.  Challenges come to all, early and late, and Aliam taught me that the measure of men is how they meet them.  Let me have some land, or a young horse–”

“Or a young boy?”

“I cannot speak of your son in such terms; he is yours, and a future Duke of Tsaia.”

“Well.  I see him as a challenge; he has been for me.  And I like what I see, Captain.  Teach him to ride better, and care for horses better, and we shall be friends a long time.”

“If you knew Aliam, my lord, he would tell you tales about me at your son’s age that would curl not only your hair but your horse’s tail.  If I am able to help him through this, I am happy to do so.”

Later that evening, the boy said, “We should not have done what we did.  I should not have done what I did.”  None of the boys had spoken to Kieri about it before but there was no doubt what the boy meant.

“You’re right,” Kieri said matter-of-factly, setting the stallion’s saddle on its rack.  “But you did, and it’s done, and you’re not doing it now.”

‘No, but I…I needed to say that.  I’m sorry I did it.  I’m sorry I spied on you.  I’m sorry…”

What would Aliam say to that?  What had Aliam said to so many of his own unwitting cruelties, blunders, thoughtless deeds, including those that got men killed?

“Listen to me,” Kieri said.  “You did something you knew was wrong, and you know that some things cannot be undone.  You can’t forget what you saw, can you?”

The boy’s head shook side to side; his eyes glistened.

“So when I was your age, and Aliam Halveric’s squire, I did things I knew I should not do, and some of those things could not be undone.  Men died, for some of my mistakes.  To be good men, when we are grown, we must learn to think.  Beyond what feels good, beyond what feels like fun, beyond what feels like it will win us points: we must learn to look ahead and think.  And it’s hard.  You have learned important things in these days: about your horse, about me, about yourself.  Now you know you can learn.  And I know you will learn.”

“Will I make more mistakes?”

“Oh, yes.  If you’re like me you will make mistakes over and over.  Men do.  Women do.  Everyone does.  It’s how we learn.  When you started riding, you fell off a lot, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So as you move into adulthood you will continue to make mistakes, and when you don’t make any mistakes at all, you’ll have made the worst, because you’ll have quit learning.  Keep learning, keep failing, but then go back and get it right.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to ride my horse again.”

“Why not?”

A mischievous grin this time.  “Because I’m still making mistakes here, walking.  Because my horse shouldn’t suffer for them. Teach me to ride your way, please, and show me by riding him yourself.”

“Now that will require your father’s permission: who’s going to ask him?”  Kieri grinned back at him.

“I will,” the boy said, with no hesitation.  “I will, and he will say Yes, and then he’ll tell me he told me the horse was too much for me in this situation, and I’ll say he was right, and then he’ll say I can ride his old horse, his second.  We can ride together.”

The End

Happy Thanksgiving

Part IX

“It’s a long story.  How much farther, do you think, and which will be first, your father’s wagon or the saddler’s?”

“The saddler’s.  Well, the Prince’s wagons of horse feed, tack, and his grooms and saddler will be there.  See that pennant?  That’s the royal one, so it’s one of those.”

The saddler, when they found him, had spare halters; they borrowed one.  Then he went to work quickly, explaining to Kieri–and Kirgan Marrakai, when reminded that this was the Kirgan’s horse–what needed to be done and why, and what exercises might help even out the muscling of the horse’s back.  Kieri and his student, as he now thought of the boy, walked along behind the saddler’s wagon with the horse, now tied to the tailboard, while the saddler worked in his shop, built into the wagon.

The boy now seemed less angry and fragile than he had earlier.  “Why is he using different colors of wool?”

“Let’s ask him,” Kieri said.  “You or me?”

“Me ask?”

“Surely.  You want to know; I’d like to know.  You can do it.”

The boy did ask, and the saddler explained, even handing the boy small tufts of wool to feel: the dark, the light, the softest, the springiest.  Several times the saddle went on and came back off the horse, then the saddler said, “Now, Kirgan, time you get up and let me see how it compresses as you ride.”

The boy looked sideways at Kieri.  “If you don’t mind,” Kieri said to the saddler. “I’m a little heavier, and will compress it faster.”

“Oh.” The saddler looked back and forth at them.

“It’s all right,” the boy said.  “My father wants him to ride him for awhile anyway.”

“Ah. Well, then.”  He offered Kieri a leg up and then walked beside the horse, feeling under the saddle as the horse walked along, seemingly quite calm.  “Like you to give him a bit of trot and canter,” the saddler said, and unfastened the halter.  Kieri turned the horse out of the line of wagons and trotted him in circles both directions, then cantered, then a hand gallop both ways. The saddler checked again, made one more adjustment, then nodded.  “Should be good for today.  Bring him back to me tomorrow, after he’s ridden, or any time he kicks up again.”

“We’ve a walk to catch up with my group,” Kieri said.  “To keep our senior commander happy, I’d best ride the horse, but you can tail or use the stirrup leather if you like.”

“Tail?”

“Have you never?  When you have reason to move faster than walking is comfortable, and not enough horses for all, a horse can carry a light rider, and help along two more at least.”  He slid one foot out of the stirrup.  “Put your hand there, and see.  He will walk faster than either of us would want to.  If you were taller, you could hold onto the stirrup leather; right now it would make your shoulder sore.  You can also, going uphill, catch the tail and let one pull you along.  They won’t kick if the tail’s being pulled–smoothly, not jerking.  It doesn’t hurt them.”

The boy did that, and they passed wagon after wagon, until Kieri saw his troops again, and the prince’s wagons just ahead.  They slowed to match them, and Kieri said “It’s our secret, eh?  If anyone asks, you’re just good at walking fast,” and when the boy pulled his hand free, set his own foot back in the stirrup.  “I suspect many of your friends don’t know about the kinds of wool the saddlers use,” he added.  “Now you know some new things.  Here’s another.  Come meet my sergeant.  He used to be in Halveric Company in Aarenis and Lyonya.”

Over the next few days, the boy asked question after question, mostly reasonable ones, as if he’d been told before that asking questions was unsuitable.  Kieri and Siger–and several of the troops–answered as if he were any new recruit or squire.  Kieri, remembering himself with Aliam–at first afraid to ask anything and then, in a flood, asking questions all day long and into the night–found the boy far less arrogant than he’d thought earlier.  The boy was quick to take suggestions, and Siger treated him like a junior squire.  To Kieri’s surprise there was no sulking, no sneering, just a willingness to learn.  Why had he been so touchy before?  Had it been the other boys, or something else?

Part VIII

Kieri knew that despite the acquiescence the boy was boiling with indignation: he had been humiliated in front of everyone by his horse, Kieri, the prince, his own father, and he was in no state to think clearly.  “Do you have a halter or lead for this horse, so we can take him to the saddler?”

“In my father’s wagon,” he said shortly.

“I don’t know which it is,” Kieri said.  Ahead of him, the Prince’s wagon lurched into motion and he turned to his sergeant.  “Sergeant, take over for the moment. The Prince has ordered we get this horse to the saddler.”

“Captain.”  Siger’s face was as blank as his own, he saw.  They were all on bog ground until they got the boy and the horse both sorted out.  One wrong step and they could be in it to the neck.  And no grant of land.  And a boy mired in helpless anger, and a horse mired in bad training, bad riding, bad saddle fitting.  He understood now, though he still wished it to have been different, Aliam’s refusal to hire him as a junior captain.  He pushed that aside and looked at the boy again.  “Can you take me to it–either your father’s supply wagon with horse tack in it, or the Prince’s saddler?”

“They’re both with the other horse supply wagons,” Kirgan Marrakai said, with slightly less stiffness.  “Back this way.”  They walked toward the tail of the line, the horse snatching now and then at grass.

“How old is he?” Kieri asked.  “Five?  Six?”

“Five.  He was backed last year by the trainer.”

“Still quite young, then.”

“Yes.  I thought–the trainer let me sit on him last year, because I was so light.  Then I grew, but he was a year older and also grew two fingers, so I thought–I thought I was doing well.”

“You grew taller; did your trainer explain what that does to your seat?”

“Taller?  I thought only heavier mattered.  That’s all the trainer talked about, how young horses should never carry too much weight.”

“That’s so, but when boys grow into men, they change the shape, where the weight is, as well as how much.  Where you can put your leg on a horse, how your balance changes when your shoulders broaden.  When did you start drilling with the sword you carry, instead of a boy’s shorter one?”

“Last winter; it was a Midwinter gift.”

“And have you done mounted exercises with it?  Knocking rag balls off poles?”
“Yes.”

“So you have more weight in your sword arm and as you reach out to do that, more weight shifts onto that side of the saddle and your horse tries to hold steady–with the muscles that are now developed more than those on the other side.”

The boy stopped short.  “I–I never thought of that!  The riding master never mentioned that!”

“And then after a few minutes it doesn’t feel good, so he hollows, to avoid the pressure–”

“Yes!  I know he does, and when I try to make him lift his back he bucks.”  He looked at Kieri wide-eyed.  “How do you know that?  Why doesn’t our riding master?  He just says ‘More leg, more leg, ride him into the bit.'”

“Did he tell you to wear spurs?”

“Yes. Because my legs aren’t strong enough, he said.”

“Um.  There are ways to strengthen legs, if you care to try.”

“You don’t have spurs.”

“I did.  I sold them”

“Because you don’t use them?”

“No, because I needed the money for something else.”

“What?”

Though Kieri Phelan, captain of Fox Company, was confident he had behaved well in the matter of raw youths spying on his bath–and just as glad it had not been a murderous attack by Pargunese soldiers–he was not at all sure the youths had really understood the magnitude of their error or his reaction to it. Of equal interest, a youth he would have expected to be with them…had not been.  Duke Verrakai’s kirgan, usually one of that group in the commanders’ tent…usually, in fact, standing next to Kirgan Marrakai and Kirgan Serrostin, sometimes between them…had not been with them.  Duke Verrakai and Duke Marrakai appeared to occupy a secondary level below that of Duke Mahieran, and slightly above Dukes Serrostin and Elloran.

A mercenary commander, Aliam had told him, must know as much or more about the power structure of employers as the employer knows about the commander.  You’ve met a prince of Tsaia, a future king, and he’s mentioned offering you a contract?  Pay attention whenever you see him among his nobles.  So Kieri had, and knew that Verrakai and Marrakai were rivals, and not friendly ones.  That Serrostin and Marrakai were friends, and Elloran was afraid of Verrakai.  That Kirgan Verrakai, whose father was not friends with Kirgan Marrakai’s father, had been cultivating Kirgan Marrakai for some purpose not yet clear, and yet…had not taken part in yesterday’s hunt.  Had the others told him?  Deliberately not invited him?  Or had he chosen not to go for reasons of his own?

He puzzled over this and the currents of ambition that swirled among the older men, not just the dukes but the counts and barons.  The nobles were not skilled at war of the type he himself knew best, but quite skilled at the methods of courtly intrigue, wielding small units of influence as skillfully as a man might use a small weapon–a dagger–to penetrate the weak points in armor. As in fighting physically, some were more direct and others more apt at ruse and guile.

Verrakai was certainly that kind.  For himself, he knew Verrakai deeply resented his having a direct contract.  His attempts to discredit the upstart mercenary were not so obvious as to catch the prince’s attention–always courteous, always mild, little corrections that weren’t, seeming deference to Kieri’s practical experience, but with little suggestions and questions that hinted at his concern Kieri–so young for such expertise but of course mentored by the famous Halverics–might not quite measure up to the task they laid on him. Under them, Kieri sensed both hostility and more military knowledge than most.  He had found the man annoying, but he found many non-soldiers annoying–a risk of his experience, Aliam had said–but now he wondered if Verrakai and his Kirgan were part of a coordinated attack…but on what?  The Marrakai family as a whole?  Or more?

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He was wet, naked but for boots, and armed, already out of the water, partway to them, sword in one hand, dagger in the other.  His clothes lay on the grass at the water’s edge; he had stamped back into his boots without their hearing or seeing him do it. He stopped when they rose from the grass, some of them already turning to flee.  Kirgan Marrakai frankly stared; the man’s pale skin was finely striped with scars, perfectly aligned, overlain by later scars clearly from war-wounds: larger, more irregular, one or two still colored darker.  And yet the body itself–he had never seen such perfect balance of muscle and bone and sinew.  Or such a perfect mask of indifference to his situation: naked and alone before wealthy men clothed.

Then he grinned.  “Oh, come, gentlemen, as I suppose you to be.  Sons of nobility.  Surely all of you are not afraid of one man, even if he holds a sword!  Draw yours, if you would feel more comfortable, while I go and dress.  If you want to enjoy the water, I am through bathing, and the pool has been refreshed by the river’s flow; it will not taint your…purity.  And it is a perfect coolness today, refreshing without biting.”

Every syllable etched as finely as any courtier’s, with a precise fraction of indulgence, courtesy, scorn, and humor; Kirgan Marrakai felt striped by it, as the captain’s body by whatever had scarred it so.  He felt his face heat with a telltale flush, and his friends, he saw, felt the same.  Damn the fellow!  And then the fellow turned his back on them, heedless of their reaction, and walked back to his clothes.  There on his back, the same pattern of fine scars as on his front, and on one firm buttock, what could only be a brand.

Horror forced the indrawn breath he heard from all of them.  The man shrugged, pulling on a shirt, toeing off his boots, carefully holding his sword in one armpit and dagger in the other, while pulling up his trousers, his socks, fastening the belt on which hung the scabbard, and sliding his weapons home, stamping back into his boots, then turning around.

“So, then: have you seen enough? Is your understanding now complete? Because if you want to see anything else–”

What else could there be?  What other horrors?  Kirgan Marrakai felt sick, and saw that Kirgan Serrostin, his closest friend, was faintly green around the lips.  Had he actually thought of what else there could be?

“–Then we must come to blades,” the captain said.  “I think we would all benefit by not doing so, do you not?”

None of them had drawn a blade.  None of them wanted to draw a blade now.  They all, knowing each other well, had the certainty of nervous cattle that what they all wanted was to get back to the army, their safe herd, and never speak of it again, at least to anyone else.  Maybe someday, when two or three were alone together, it might be mentioned but…not now.

He gave them a long, level stare out of grey eyes feral as a wolf’s.  Then a sharp nod.  “Good.  We understand one another.  I am returning to my unit.  Please do not follow me closely.  You may go ahead, or aside, as you please, of course, but I really can commend the quality of the bathwater here.”

As he came up the rise, they parted, as for a prince, and when he had gone by they did not turn to watch, but stared at the ground awhile.  No one wanted to bathe there.  Kirgan Marrakai wondered if he would ever be able to strip off in front of his father’s body servant–or anyone else–again.  Inside his clothes, his body felt alien to him, wrong in some way.  He knew it wasn’t flabby or misshapen, but he felt ashamed even so.  It was days before he realized that what it lacked was scars.

They came back to the camp slowly, reluctantly.  Would the captain have reported their spying on him? There was nothing wrong with seeing another man bathing naked in a stream…they had played in streams and ponds naked before.  But they knew–and knew they had known when they did it–that sneaking after someone, some particular person, to peer at his nakedness, hoping to see something laughable or disgusting, was different.  Not honorable.  The Crown Prince would not, they knew, approve.  Their own fathers would not approve.  They could not approve themselves, or each other, and each one sought for another to blame. Kirgan Marrakai saw them glance at him and look away–he was the one who had told them about the captain.

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The other parts will come later this week, God willin’ and the power stays on, the roof stays on, and I get some other critical things done.

“And yes, Gerry spent a campaign season studying something military with them down in Aarenis a few years ago, but that doesn’t explain it, really.”

It didn’t explain anything, Kirgan Marrakai thought.  As Kirgan, he could attend the daily briefings.  His father had a seat at the table with the other senior nobles, the lesser standing behind them, while he–and other kirgans–stood silent, backs against the canvas wall, supposedly learning something from watching their elders give way to the Prince and this stranger, this mere Captain Phelan,  who had the Prince’s ear when it came to matters military.

Well, he was a professional, after all.  A hireling soldier, fought for money: not honor, not loyalty.  Rumor, gleaned from servants, was that the man had squired for Aliam Halveric in Aarenis, that he had attended the Falkian equivalent of the Bells.  But he displayed no ruby.  Had he dropped out?  Been thrown out?  Had Halveric refused to hire him?

Arrogant young cock, thought Kirgan Marrakai, seeing the back of the man’s head tilt toward the Crown Prince.  And nothing to be proud about.  Couldn’t even keep a horse.  Probably rode as badly as any farmer’s brat.  He amused himself that afternoon, imagining how his own stallion, who regularly threw him, would throw the arrogant young cock faster and harder.

The army moved slowly, leaving plenty of time for the young men of noble families to amuse themselves with sport: hunting and arms practice and mounted competitions.  They had servants to set up and take down their tents, cook their meals, care for their horses and their clothes.  They were–barring the arms practice all their fathers insisted on, under direction of an armsmaster or Girdish Marshal–on holiday.  When they came to a tributary of the river behind them, flowing from the north, the army paused to water the stock and the people, and some of the servants went to washing clothes.  The younger men found places for water play.

Kirgan Marrakai noticed that Captain Phelan let his men take quick baths, but did not bathe with them.  Arrogant, he told himself.  He bathed every day from a tub in his father’s tent, water brought in by his father’s servants, the proper way to bathe.  He told his friends.

They noticed the red-headed captain–hard to miss that flaming hair in the sun–heading still further upstream, with a rag of some sort over his shoulder.  Too shy to bathe with his men?  Well.  It would be good sport to know why.  Maybe he…lacked something.  They sniggered over that delicate suggestion.  Maybe he was disfigured in some way not visible when he was covered neck to wrist and head to heel in cloth and leather or metal.  Perhaps he was a branded criminal and the Crown Prince would definitely need to know that.

They turned aside, walked fifteen strides back toward the army, and then back around.  He was out of sight; the stream here ran lower than the rest, and they headed that way, but at a distance, sure he could not see them, moving as quietly as dozen young men with no training could.  One would go ahead, bending low then taking quick looks, until he could see the red head and if it was moving, then signal the others.  Finally, their forward scout waved them down and forward, and they came crawling through the lush grass to where they could see a wider space of moving water.  And their target.

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Back when I was writing the original DEED, I often wrote extra bits from various POVs.  Side stories, I called them.  Didn’t have internet, didn’t have any place to put them, hadn’t been published yet.  Some of those stories stuck to my mind and when, in time, I had misplaced printouts of them, and was back in Paksworld, I wrote newer versions in Word.  Various times, some older, some newer.  This is part of a group of incidents involving Kieri Phelan on his first independent contract for the Crown of Tsaia (he’d been a subordinate commander to other merc commanders or nobles who needed a small unit for some reason.)   Pargun had invaded Tsaia north of the Honnorgat; this army was combined of the feudal levy and one little bitty merc group: Kieri’s.   A single cohort, one hundred.   Siger (yes, the same Siger) was his sergeant.  None of the captains you’ve seen before; not even Arcolin was there yet.  For most of the people in that army, he was a complete unknown,  with no family, no friends, no history.

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Kieri Phelan’s First Command

As the Tsaian army marched out of Vérella, unit after unit swung into line.  They were on the road to Pargun, to take back the land the Pargunese had invaded, and they were full of confidence and pride in their numbers.  The Tsaian Royal Guard, in its rose and white uniforms led the way.  Every feudal troop, under the small banner of its local lord, and the larger banner of its lord’s lord, and those highest lords–the dukes–following (and not exactly under) the banner of the royal house, the rose circlet of Tsaia.  All the nobles accompanying their troops rode, though except for cavalry units the troops marched.

All but one.  One small group, one hundred and one strong, infantry with short swords and shields, marched under the pennant of no land-holder at all, but a mercenary captain.  Maroon bars bordered the white center, and a small maroon fox mask smirked out at the world from the white.

Its commander marched with his men, on foot, through the dust that hung over the the whole army.  His clothes, maroon with white trim, like his troops, were coated with dust, gray or tan from whatever soil they marched over.  His face was masked in dust, his fox-red hair dulled with dust.  His armor coated with it.  And this dusty, increasingly unkempt-looking unit marched directly behind the Crown Prince’s entourage, because this unit–holding a contract directly from the Crown–ranked equal in standing–according to the Crown Prince–with any other that had contracted directly with the Crown, and the Crown Prince himself had dictated the order of march.

It was ridiculous, and many of the nobles or their sons had mentioned–with delicate courtesy–to the Crown Prince that it was perhaps injudicious to so honor a foreigner, a mere mercenary.  “If I’d known you wanted a mercenary unit, I could have hired you one,” Duke Verrakai had said.  “No need to deal with him yourself.”

Young Marrakai, his father’s Kirgan, had said as much to the younger prince, two steps farther from the throne.  “Any of us could have hired him.”

“Yes, but Gerry wanted to.”

“But why?”

“I have no idea.  I asked and he told me to figure it out for myself.  He’s a bastard, no doubt of that–no family anyone heard of anywhere…”

“Any history at all?”

“Was in Halveric Company–”

“Ahhh.  Lyonya, then.  A bastard from that family?”

“I heard it was not, but you know–bastards.  Some people don’t claim them.”  That with a sniff.  The Mahierans, at least, acknowledged theirs, which made it fashionable to do so and less fashionable–honorable, they would say–not to do so.  Kirgan Marrakai had often wondered if his father had sired any, but was afraid to ask, given the lectures he’d received as he grew into the ability.

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(Part One)

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