piece of story
They rode in silence, Charthat leading them into a switchbacking trail over ridges which lay below a long series of peaks, cut from the sandstone of a long-past ocean. They were heavily overgrown with chaparral and stream side groves of oaks. Until they reached a camp for secondday sleep, Charthat said nothing. As they rubbed down the tired beasts, he handed Hilojat a currycomb; the doctor thanked him and went on currying Smiler. “Look,” Charthat said, “shall we not quarrel over this matter of religion? It helps no one.”
“This is agreeable to me,” said Hilojat stonily, still hurt, for no reason that Charthat could see.
They ate in silence, and then slept. Keeping watch, Hilojat was cold, and slipped the end of the blanket over his boots. Charthat woke, muttered something angry, and turned over and went back to sleep.
They went on, speaking when they had to. Below them, below the turn of trail on the mountain’s knee, they saw, in the dusk, a hundred of soldiers packing camp, mounting, forming a column to ride off. “Them!” Charthat said, “it’s them, Hilojat. The hundred from that fort where we slept.”
“You think so?” The doctor looked at the hundred’s banner, two km below where they crouched in thorny blackberries, their manhorses behind them, where they’d not be seen. “It’s an Alegani banner, for certain, maybe the Second, maybe the Fourth.”
“Why those numbers?” Hilojat was awfully well informed, but, of course, he was a spy.
“Alegani have five legions. The First is out under the Khus himself, whacking on the Churgani, I think. The Fifth is guarding Favashar, for all the good it’ll do’em,” said the doctor.
“They....Huh?” Charthat did not understand this. “Why won’t it do them any good?” Learning to speak from scholar-nuns had made Charthat painfully precise in what he said, and living in a dorm full of boys hadn’t undone the damage entirely. His lack of military experience was another problem; Hilojat’s contracts with the legions had meant that the good doctor had had more time under arms than he had. “What is wrong?”
“The Alegan is poor. It’s mostly farms, shepherds, little things like lacquer makers and glass mines, things that don’t pay well. The legions don’t pay well, and don’t take enough out of soldiers’ pay to equip them well.” (Soldiers paid for their own equipment through a system where it was deducted from their pay; this both paid for the arms and made sure that soldiers didn’t lose them.) “The legions aren’t bad men and women; the Khus won’t equip and train them. That’s why they’ve done so poorly in this dust-up.”
“Training?” The monks went out with the legions in the Churgan and the Va’aragan. Vokherkhe monks didn’t get postings to the Khogan, but there were faTheyists there, so someone was going out to serve the troops, chant, teach, and fight when needed. (Monks and nuns also helped out on the medical end of things.)
“They aren’t well trained. Khus Thuvalch’s predecessor used to have gladiators up from the arena to teach the boys, hunters to coach the girls on the firing range. Thuvalch didn’t keep on buying those gladiators’ contracts; it cost too much, the keepers of the coin said.” Hilojat sighed. Below them, the long line of men moved out on the mountain road, manhorses laden with supplies and war gear following, with a drover at the end of the line.
“Well, why are they retreating and abandoning their bases?”, Charthat asked.
“I don’t know. Do you want to climb down and ask them? And what would they do?”, Hilojat said. “Arrest us as spies?”
“You are a spy!” Hilojat had for years used his traveling-doctor work to collect information on the monotheist communities and forward it to a priest, his handler, in Gunkashar. Of course, when the news that he was partnered with Charthat had come up, the priest, a man named Koleth, Shenna’s son, had tried to kill Hilojat. This had made things awkward for Hilojat in the Alegan, the reason for their circuitous journey.
“Of course I collected information for the Archpriest on the hidden faVashala communities; I was the only one who could do it. But they. Well, we’d have trouble catching up to them, wouldn’t we?”
Charthat said, “Sad-Eyes is good on steep slopes, but Smiler, not so much. I don’t want them hurt. We’d best avoid soldiers anyway. A lone messenger?”
“We’ve met none. And on this rabbit-deer’s track, we won’t meet them, either.”
“True. Well, we should go on.”
They went on, and camped in a thicket of junipers as cloudy night fell. They spoke little.
When they came out of the Ferchus into the Athulm, the long arc of valley grazed and farmed by Ghir peasants between the Ferchu and Batharkh mountain ranges, they again saw soldiers ahead of them. “We’re wiser to avoid them,” said Hilojat.
“There are more than a hundred of them,” said Charthat.
“What do you mean?”, said Hilojat.
“Look at the cook fires,” Charthat said. “Count them.”
“I can’t,” the doctor said after a while. “The wind.”
“Wait. Watch carefully.” They did. “The wind lets up.” It was early firstday. The night had been clear and they had made good time. “There are at least twenty-six cookfires.”
“I keep losing track and having to start over.”
Charthat said, “I understand. It’s not easy. But look. Ten to a cook fire,” which was camp discipline, so he’d been told, “and twenty-six fires; they’re not boiling soap! This is another hundred, maybe more than one. They’re gathering all the Alegani troops they can. What are they doing?”
“I have no idea.” Despite being a monotheist, nominally the same faith as these men. “It makes no sense to abandon frontier forts one by one. Not unless something. Oh.”
“What do you mean?” asked Charthat.
“A thought came to me. What if they’re faced by something worse in the Nurro? Something that demands all the men, all the resources that they can throw at it?”
“What is that? What is attacking them?” Charthat asked. “They’re fighting the Churgani, mostly, aren’t they?”
“Mostly. The other faTheyist provinces might have turned on them, united against the Alegan? Maybe?”
“Maybe the Protector grew a spine-“
“Or grew up,” Hilojat said. The current Protector was fifteen years old. “And attacked them. Came at the Alegan to break them, subdue them and end the civil war.”
“Maybe,” and Charthat smiled. “That’s good news, the Protectorate back under one ruler, then?”
“Maybe it’s good news,” Hilojat said. “I’ll be glad when we know more.
He wasn’t.
They argued again, riding down the spine of the Batharkhs, one secondnight lit by the huge gibbous face of Butros and the moons Marin and Ngobi; the Empress would rise soon, heralding the slow dawn. Charthat was never able to put his finger, later, on what had set Hilojat off, and there were things he said that even he, trained as he was, would rather have forgotten.
And Hilojat rode off. Charthat called after him, worried: The man was no warrior and could hardly survive alone in the wilderness or among the primitive mountain folk. Charthat made camp, alone with Smiler, in a hollow where he built a fire beneath a rock overhang. No mansion, but it would do. He fed the beast and rubbed her long muscles, weary from the ride, and made himself some waybread ere he let himself sleep, since alone, he could hardly set watches.
He woke surrounded by armed men, faNurro by the look of them, spears and crossbows dropped, coming to attention when he woke at the nudge of a boot. He came quickly awake (growing up in a dorm, after all, made night-time pranks nearly inevitable) and spread his hands. Empty, see? The leader of the men, an oddly dark-skinned fellow, approached, and motioned him to sit up. “Ho, Khus. Your purse, then.”
He produced it; it contained a mere three chothio, three days’ wages for an unskilled worker, since Hilojat had carried the cash (which he wasn’t about to tell them!) and knew how and when to haggle. (Charthat was learning). “Where’d you hide the money then? Socks, or your under-things? Give it up.” He shrugged.
“I can undress, but you’ll get no pleasure from it. And no cash, either. All spent.”
The leader said, “Liar!” And to his men, “Strip him, and take his cash.”
Charthat got to his feet.
“Khus, we aren’t perverts or rapists; he gave you his purse right readily, little as there was in it. And taking his sword and mount would kill him, in these mountains in winter,” said one grizzled man.
“Are you a thief or a nun?” asked the chief. “Rob him or join him, man!”
“Sir,” another man said, “let him fight, at least, for his sword. Isn’t that any Khus’ right?”
Charthat didn’t know that.
“Stand, then, and take up your sword!” roared the chief. Charthat unwrapped himself from his blanket, motioned to Smiler to stand back, and faced the chief empty-handed.
“Come at me, Khus. Take out your sword, if you like. I need none,” said the monk, who posed as a warrior. “Let’s fight, as you said.”
He spent the time while the man was spluttering and being handed his sword in stretching and testing his road-weary muscles. Did he know-
The man shouted and rushed at him with a blow to the head. Charthat danced the rat snake and evaded the blow, then jumped back a short distance in the campsite, avoiding the ashes of his small fire. He never stopped moving, testing the man’s reaction time (slow) and his handling of the sword (so-so).