The Three Lands Omnibus Part 9

Payne said, as though I had not spoken, "Do you deny the charge?"

I looked hesitantly over at Carle. He nodded slightly, and I said, "I'm not sure- That is, I know that I'm guilty, but I wounded Fowler- I mean, I struck him under provocation. I think I did, anyway."

Carle hissed, "Do not look at me. Look at the judge."

I turned my attention back to the lieutenant. He was standing as still as before; only his cloak rustled from a breeze whistling through the doorway. Beside him, Payne said, "The prisoner pleads that he is guilty but states that his crime was done under provocation. Let the witness against the prisoner be called."

"Carle, Sublieutenant of the Border Mountain Patrol!" cried Devin in a booming voice.

Carle took one step forward, and I waited for him to speak, but the lieutenant's muteness seemed to have carried over to him as well, for he stood silently as Payne shuffled through some sheets in his hand. Then Payne said, "The witness against the prisoner is as follows-"

After a moment, I realized that Payne was reciting what Carle had seen after I attacked Fowler. The witness was dry and concise a so concise that it was over almost before it had begun, and Payne was soon saying, "Is this your witness against the prisoner?"

"It is," replied Carle in a voice as dry as his witness.

"Step forward, then."

Carle did so, and I watched with bewilderment as he took the scribing board and pen Payne offered him, and wrote something short on the page Payne had been reading. Then Carle stepped back and rejoined me.

My head was beginning to spin with uncertainty. I almost wished I was back in Koretia, being placed under trial for my broken vow. There, at least, I would have known what I was facing: a long, three-way argument between myself, my father, and the G.o.ds' representative, Fenton's successor. There would have been much shouting and no doubt tears as well, before the matter was settled, but at least I would have had the opportunity to defend myself. I was beginning to doubt that I would be allowed to do so here.

"Does any other witness stand in this court?" Devin paused, and I glanced to the where the other patrol guards were standing, but all of them continued to watch the proceedings silently. Devin cried, "The prisoner may offer his witness!"

"Address the judge," Carle whispered into my ear, perhaps doubtful by now that I could follow instructions unless they were repeated. "Keep to the point. Tell him only the relevant facts."

I wondered what the relevant facts were. I took a step forward awkwardly, cleared my throat, and said, "Sir, I-"

"Call him Judge," hissed Carle.

We proceeded slowly, me explaining that I had taken a blood vow to avenge the death of my blood brother, Carle correcting the manner of my witness at intervals. When we reached the point of the breaking of my blood vow, I hesitated, knowing that my next witness would condemn me in any trial of the G.o.ds' law. But I was here because I believed that the Emorians' law was a just law, so I told the entire tale of the breaking of my blood vow and of my decision to flee to Emor. I skipped forward to the moment when I struck Fowler with my dagger; then, having described that, I hesitated, uncertain.

The room was silent, but for the whistle of wind. The door of the hut had been eased further open by the wind's hand during the proceedings, and only the faint warmth of the fire ate away at the chill in my body. Yet sweat ran down my back.

The lieutenant had been utterly still during my witness, with no change of expression to help me a.s.sess what he thought of my tale. Now, in a voice as level as an altar, he said, "I wish to question the prisoner."

"The judge may interrogate you or the other witnesses if he has questions about the witness that has been given," Carle explained in a whisper.

Still with no movement but that of his mouth, the lieutenant asked, "If you had settled in another Koretian village, would your life have been in danger?"

I looked at Carle. He nodded, and I said, "If it was a village in the borderland, my family might have found me in the end. But if I'd travelled farther south- No, probably not."

"So you had a choice besides breaching the Emorian border."

I felt a lump forming in my throat, but I forced myself to say, "Yes."

"So you did not need to enter Emor in order to save your life."

"I didn't just come here to save my life- It was everything- I had to know- It was because of the law-" I abandoned my efforts and said in a dull voice, "No, I didn't have to enter Emor in order to keep from being killed."

The lieutenant allowed Payne barely enough time to scribe these words before he said, "You gave witness that you did not intend to harm any patrol guards. Why, then, did you strike Soldier Fowler?"

"I didn't mean to," I said miserably. "I was just frightened and a I didn't think. If I'd had time to think, I wouldn't have hurt him."

Another pause followed. Payne, I saw, was continuing to scribe all that the lieutenant and I were saying, while Devin appeared alert, apparently sensing the approach of the trial's end. Two of the guards had wandered over to the open doorway, as though fearing that I would attempt flight. There was a pause.

"I wish to give witness," said the lieutenant in a flat voice.

I stared. At my ear, Carle said, "The judge normally does not give witness, but if he believes that a judgment is in balance and that his own witness will tilt the balance, he is duty-bound to speak. You will have the opportunity afterwards to dispute the witness."

I acknowledged Carle's words with a nod, but my gaze had already fallen to the floor. I knew what witness the lieutenant would give. He was the only man who had seen me, not once, but twice with a blade drawn against him. This was the proof needed to condemn me as a dishonorable lawbreaker.

"On two occasions, the prisoner held a naked blade in his hand in my presence," said the lieutenant, his voice still curiously flat. "On both occasions, the prisoner discarded the blade rather than attack me, despite the fact that he was in imminent danger of capture. I offer this witness in support of the prisoner's witness that he did not intend to harm the patrol, and that his crime was undertaken without clear understanding of his deed."

Devin had been watching the lieutenant throughout his speech; now he turned to look at Payne and raised his eyebrows. Payne gave a slight shrug. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other guards exchanging glances.

I felt moisture trickling down from my mouth and realized that my mouth was hanging open. I rubbed my face against my sleeve, began to speak, and closed my mouth again hastily.

I missed whatever signal the lieutenant gave Devin. Devin announced to the far corners of the hut, "The prisoner may speak."

"I don't understand," I said. My eyes were now on the lieutenant, trying to read from his expression or his pose what his thoughts were. "You spoke for me. You didn't have to say what you did. You could have remained silent. Yet I nearly killed one of your guards. If we were in Koretia, you'd have killed me. Why ..." My breath failed me momentarily. "What made you do this? What made you help me?"

"I could have spoken out of fear," the lieutenant replied in the same formal voice he had used before. "If any of my men knew or suspected that I was omitting important witness in a case I was judging, they would be duty-bound to place a charge against me with the Chara's court summoners."

I was already shaking my head before he finished speaking; I had seen the guards exchange glances again. "I don't think it was that," I said. "I don't think you told the others what happened between us a at least, not about the last encounter between us. n.o.body else knew a not the soldiers, not the Chara. No one knew, so why did you tell?"

I could not have said whether the lieutenant's voice was still formal, for when he replied, it was in a soft voice that barely reached me. "I knew," he said. "And if I had broken my vow to the Chara, I would have known."

The door must have blown all of the way open at that moment, for I felt a chill cover me as though the famous northern snows had fallen upon me. I understood then what Fenton tried to tell me a month ago: I knew then why it was that the Emorians had no need for vengeful G.o.ds. What were the G.o.ds but the creators and upholders of the G.o.ds' law? And what kept men from breaking the G.o.ds' law? Not fear of the G.o.ds and their vengeance a that hadn't stopped me from breaking my vow.

What kept men from breaking the G.o.ds' law was desire for honor. I knew that, I who had stripped myself of all honor five days ago and had lived in dishonor ever since. I could never have had the courage to do that if I had not suspected that a greater honor lay beyond the G.o.ds' law. Here, in the land where I had fled to, so great was men's sense of honor that they did not even require G.o.ds to peer into their spirits and bring vengeance upon them if they went astray. Their own sense of honor kept them from breaking the law a the true law, the Chara's law.

The lieutenant had been watching my face all this time. Now he said, "I will not give you false witness as to the nature of Emor; Emorians exist who will lie in court. Lying occurs in this land, and murder, and all the misdeeds you know in Koretia. This is the Land of the Living, not the Land Beyond; you will not find perfection in Emor."

"I'm not looking for perfect men," I said, my throat tight. "Just a law that makes men try to be perfect. I'm looking for a law worthy of honor."

The lieutenant simply looked at me. I could not tell whether or not I'd said the right thing. I no longer cared whether I said the right thing. I'd said the truth a and here, here in this court where truth meant honor, that was all that mattered.

He found me guilty through lack of clear understanding and sentenced me to forty lashes. I had half expected that, after the witness he gave me on my behalf, but even so I felt a mixture of sickness and relief when he handed down the sentence: Sickness that, so new to this land, I had already committed a crime. Relief that I had not been judged to be worse.

"Do you wish to appeal my sentence to the higher court?" the lieutenant asked as he slipped off his cloak and chain and gave them to Devin. In exchange, Devin offered him something that flashed grey-bright, like a lake. As the lieutenant pinned closed his neck-flap, I saw what the clasp was: a silver brooch, whose open metalwork depicted a mountain barred by a sword. Now that I looked closer, I could see that the same picture was faintly woven upon his right sleeve, black against black. And all of the other guards here a I saw at a quick glance a wore the same brooches, though the metal differed from person to person: either copper or dull iron. Carle wore a copper brooch. Only the lieutenant wore a silver brooch.

I looked back to see that the lieutenant was watching me levelly, and I remembered the question he had asked me. I had a sudden vision of myself in the Chara's court, being stared upon by the ruler of the Emorian Empire, his expression as cold as the lieutenant's, or even colder ... "Please, no!" I blurted out.

Devin put his hand over his mouth, and for a moment I even thought I saw the lieutenant's mouth twitch. But the lieutenant simply said, "Then wait outside, please. Carle, a word with you." He turned aside from me.

I looked round, but everybody was avoiding looking at me. After a minute of staring uncertainly, I followed the order I'd been given and left the hut.

When I got outside, I went to the corner-post of the cottage and leaned against it, shivering in the sharp wind as I remembered all the beatings I had witnessed as a child. There weren't many; beatings are a serious matter in Koretia, inflicted only on serious criminals, such as thieves. I remember one such thief, sobbing as the whip lashed open his bare skin.

The sky was turning grey with dawn. I wondered whether any Koretians were taking advantage of this moment to slip over the border. Then I wondered why I had been allowed to leave the cottage alone. Surely I could easily slip away from the patrol and escape my punishment.

But no, if I travelled in the direction of Emor, the patrol's sharp-eared lieutenant would surely catch me again. If I travelled in the direction of Koretia ...

That was why the lieutenant had allowed me to come out here alone, I realized: to give me the opportunity to run away, to turn my back on the Chara's law. I straightened my spine and waited.

After a few minutes, patrol guards began to leave the cottage, one by one. None of them looked my way. They disappeared into the tunnel, four of them; then there was a s.p.a.ce of time in which I waited for Sublieutenant Carle to leave for his daily patrol as well, but he didn't come. I wondered whether he had decided to spend the day sleeping, after his exhausting hunt the night before.

The cottage door opened again, and a man exited. It was Carle. In his left hand was a flask, and in his right hand was a whip.

My breath left me all of the sudden, and my knees felt as though they would give way. So quickly departed the courage I had hoped would sustain me. Carle reached me just as I was sure I would fall to the ground. With a grim look on his face, he took hold of my arm, so hard that I yelped. His look turned to contempt.

He pulled me round to the side of the cottage. There, crammed between two rocks high up on the cottage wall, was a rusted whipping ring. Carle released me, and I looked hopefully at the flask; was it perhaps drugged wine, meant to dull the pain of my punishment? But Carle simply placed the flask on the ground and ordered me to strip to my loincloth. When I had done this, he bound my wrists to the ring with the now-familiar leather strap. I had to stand on my toes to reach the ring; its creator had evidently a.s.sumed that all prisoners would be of a full-grown height.

I looked over at Carle, who had shifted to the side in order to inspect his handiwork. There was nothing rea.s.suring about his expression. He looked like a dueller who plans that the first blood he draws should be the last.

His gaze dropped down to me. "The lieutenant showed you pity," he said. "Expect none from me."

No reply could be made to such a statement, and so I remained silent. Carle stepped back. I was shivering hard now from the chill of the autumn wind against my bare skin.

Then his lash bit into my back, and my body blazed with pain.

Forty lashes, the lieutenant had said. I tried to count them, as a way to focus my mind on something other than the red pain that gnawed at my back like a hungry animal. Soon I was gasping; then I was sobbing; and then, without warning, night swept down upon me.

In the next moment, I learned the purpose of the flask, as Carle dashed the flask-water into my face. I came back to my senses, sputtering from the water that had made its way into my nose and mouth. I opened my eyes to see Carle looking at me. This time, his contempt took the form of a dark smile.

"What weaklings you Koretians are," he said. "The lieutenant, in his pity, gave you twenty fewer lashes than he would have given an Emorian, and you cannot even bear those."

I mumbled my reply, and Carle's smile disappeared. "What did you say?"

I was afraid that, if I wasn't clear this time, I would not have the courage to say it again, so I shouted my reply: "Give me sixty lashes!"

Carle's face was like a thundercloud. He moved out of sight, and his whip whistled through the air before it tore into my back.

I counted the lashes till they reached forty, and then I kept counting, and then I lost all awareness of anything but the lash, slicing into my flesh with sickening thoroughness. Somewhere, dimly, I could hear a voice, calling upon the G.o.d of Mercy, and I realized with horror that the voice was mine.

I don't remember how Carle got me back inside the cottage. He must have carried me, I suppose. The next thing I remember is hearing myself scream as my back touched the pallet. Somebody said something, and I was lifted. Wine was forced into my mouth, and I choked on it but forced myself to swallow the liquid, because I could taste the heavy drugs that I knew would ease my pain.

I was pushed back onto the pallet, gently this time, being placed on my side rather than my back. After a minute, I opened my eyes.

Carle was nowhere in sight. A patrol guard I hadn't seen before was kneeling beside me, cutting out bandages with his dagger. Above him, looking down at me, was the lieutenant.

"Well, Adrian," he said, "what do you think of the Chara's law now?"

There was no mockery to his tone. With effort, I whispered, "Will you let me enter Emor?"

I could barely hear my own voice, but he nodded slowly. "You have earned the right."

I wasn't sure what he was saying a whether he was saying that my punishment had earned me the right, or that my conduct at the trial had earned me the right. It didn't matter. For it had come to me that, whether or not he let me enter Emor, I had known the Chara's law, and had seen its justice. That was all that mattered. I could die now.

I said something of this, I don't know what a I must have been incoherent. But whatever I said caused the lieutenant to suddenly kneel by me and put his hand on my shoulder. He looked over at the guard beside me. "Gamaliel?" he said.

"He will live." Gamaliel didn't look up from where he was cutting bandages.

The lieutenant's hand tightened on my shoulder, as though the other man's answer truly mattered to him. Then he looked back at me. "Sleep, Adrian," he said. "n.o.body will send you back to Koretia against your will. I swear that."

He was not the sort of man, I knew, to treat an oath lightly. I felt myself relax, and my head began to swim, and then I fell into the deepest sleep I had ever known.

CHAPTER TEN.

The nineteenth day of October in the 940th year a.g.l.

I awoke this morning feeling well enough to get up and walk around. Gamaliel, who is the patrol's physician, grudgingly allowed me to do so; he has been clucking his tongue each day as he tends my back. He keeps telling me that he has seen beaten men with much worse wounds, but one time when he said this, I looked over my shoulder and saw him glaring in Carle's direction.

I'm becoming accustomed to the rhythm of the patrol schedule: the times when the patrol guards sleep, the times when they work, the times when talk and entertain themselves, and the times at dawn and dusk when the full unit gathers together to exchange information. During my first day spent in the patrol hut, I was barely aware of this rhythm, for I drifted in and out of my drugged sleep like a burrow-bird bobbing his head in and out of his earth-hole. Occasionally I heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation or laughter. Once I opened my eyes and saw all the guards except the lieutenant and sublieutenant standing stiffly against the hut wall; even the sublieutenant, though he was apart from the others, was poised as straight as a n.o.bleman's blade as the lieutenant spoke. Such interludes, though, were brief. The bitter wine soon pulled me back into a blackness where I was grateful to flee, for my back felt as though it were being ridden by the sun.

My first full wakefulness, then, came a day and two nights later, when the hut was silent except for the soft snore of a guard nearby.

Some time during my sleep I had been transferred onto a cot, for I was several inches from the floor. I was still lying on my side. I shifted my eyes a the only part of my body I could bear to move a and looked around me. All about the room I could see the dark shapes of men lying on the floor on thin pallets, covered by the same sort of rough blankets that now covered my back and scratched at my wound bandages. Red embers, as small as demon's eyes, glowed from the central hearth, casting a light as dim as twilight shadows. I was placed close to the fire, facing toward the open hut door that pulled wind-whistles in from the mountains. A sound behind me, as soft as a sigh, almost caused me to jerk my head around, but in the next moment, the source of the sound came round to my front, looked down at me for a moment silently, then sat down on the floor in front of me. He was holding two cups and two long flasks, as tall as pitchers.

"Wild-berry or wall-vine?" asked Carle, holding the flasks forward for my inspection. "We drink both here in the mountains; you have your choice."

"What is wall-vine?" I asked, trying to keep my voice as low as Carle's so that I wouldn't wake the others.

"It's an Emorian wine."

"I'll take that one," I replied quickly. I was aware that I was being tested, but I would have made the same choice in any case. My father has no taste for Emorian wine, so this was the first time I had been granted the opportunity to taste an Emorian vintage.

It was hard to tell from Carle's expression whether I had pa.s.sed the test. He handed me the flask; it was so warm to the touch that I knew he must have heated it by the central hearth-fire nearby, which was filling the room with a mist of smoke. Somewhere above us, the smoke-hole whistled from the night wind.

Carle was sitting to the side of the cot, so I had not even needed to raise my head in order to see him. Now, with a movement that sent pain down my spine like white lightning, I propped myself up on one elbow and sipped from the flask.

I tasted green meadows. Green meadows, and dew shining under the dawn sun, and just a touch of the sweetness found in white clover. I looked up at Carle, who was sipping silently from his own flask, and I said with surprise, "This is good!"

He didn't quite smile, but I thought I saw a spark of satisfaction flare in his eyes. "I've always thought so," he replied. "Of course, it takes some Koretians a while to adjust to wall-vine wine. A lot of them think that the taste is too bland."

I shook my head, sipping from the flask again. The wine was like cool water compared to the fire of wild-berry wine; it blended well with the soft breathing of the sleeping patrol guards and the hushed sigh of the wind. Faintly on the border of the wind, I heard a short whistle, and the whistled reply.

"I lied to you, you know."

My gaze returned to Carle. He had set the flask upright on the floor and was sitting more stiffly than before. When I made no reply, he said carefully, "Emorian judges have leeway in how hard a sentence they impose. The lieutenant could have given you anything between twenty and sixty lashes. He chose to give you forty lashes; it had nothing to do with you being Koretian."

My mind was still befogged with the drugged wine; I groped toward a coherent thought. When I still did not speak, Carle said, with his spine now as stiff as a black mountain, "I told the lieutenant afterwards what I'd done, and he called the patrol together so that he could give me a public reprimand. He said that, the next time I disobeyed his orders in such a manner, he'd have me stripped of my rank." There was a pause, during which a fire-breath of smoke pa.s.sed between us; then Carle concluded, "He didn't tell me I must apologize to you, but that was obvious enough. So I'm sorry. I behaved in a manner unworthy of one of the Chara's soldiers."

I couldn't think of anything to say at first. I had thought that Carle was approaching me of his own free will, but now it appeared that he was talking to me only out of a sense of duty toward his official. Carle was still sitting as rigidly, as though he were pinioned to a wall, though, so I finally said, in a stumbling manner, "Well, that's all right. It doesn't matter."