A simple life of arising, working and going to bed held its own sort of peace. The physical labour of each day was not nearly as demanding as my studies at the Academy. I wondered if other men lived this way, rising, working, eating and sleeping with barely a thought beyond doing the same thing the next day. I’ll confess that I felt a strange attraction to such a simple life.
When a week had passed by, and I’d heard nothing from Sergeant Duril, I sought him out one afternoon. When he opened his door to my knock, the first words he said were, ‘You didn’t tell me you’d been kicked out of the Academy for being fat!’ I couldn’t tell if he was outraged on my behalf or angry with me for holding back information.
I spoke evenly, without anger. ‘That’s because it isn’t true.’
He stared at me, waiting.
‘Dr Amicas gave me a medical discharge from the Academy. I wasn’t kicked out. He felt I couldn’t serve as a cavalla officer as I am. If I manage to regain my old shape, I’ll be able to continue my studies.’ I wasn’t sure of that, but I had to hold on to the hope or sink into despair.
Duril stood back from his door and motioned me in. His apartments were stuffy after the sunny day, even with the door left ajar. I took a seat at his table.
Slowly he sat down across from me and admitted, ‘I took a lot of pride in your being at the Academy. It meant a lot to me to think of you being there and being one of them, and knowing just as much as any of them fancy city boys, thanks to what I’d taught you.’
That took me by surprise. I’d never paused to consider that my success might mean a personal triumph to Sergeant Duril. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly. ‘I was doing well until this befell me. And once I’ve straightened it out and returned to the Academy, I’ll do you proud. I promise.’
As if his first admission had opened a door, he suddenly added, ‘You never wrote to me. I had sort of hoped for a letter from you.’
That surprised me even more. ‘I thought you couldn’t read!’ I said, and then flinched to how blunt my words were.
‘I could have had someone read it to me,’ he retorted testily. After a pause he added, ‘I sent you a letter. When I heard you’d been sick and nearly died.’
‘I know. It reached me right before I came home. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said stiffly. He looked aside from me as he added, ‘I’m not an educated man, Nevare. I’m not even, as you well know, a proper soldier son, born to the career. What I know about soldiering, I taught myself or learned the hard way. And I did my best to pass it on to you. I wanted you to be an officer that, well, understood what it was to really be a soldier. Not the kind of man who sits in his tent and orders men to go out and do what he couldn’t or wouldn’t do himself. Someone who knew what it was like to have to go a couple of days with no water for yourself or your horse, someone who knew about the salt and sweat of soldiering for himself. So you could be a good officer.’
And here was another man I’d failed. My heart sank but I tried not to let it show. ‘You didn’t waste your time, Sergeant Duril. I’ve no intention of giving up my career. Even if I have to enlist as a common soldier and rise as a ranker, I’m determined to do it.’ As I said those words, I was a bit surprised to find how deeply I meant them.
He cocked his head at me. ‘Well. I guess I can’t ask more of you than that, Nevare.’ He smiled suddenly, pleased with himself. ‘And I think you can’t ask more of me than what I have for you. Fancy an evening ride?’
‘I’m not averse to it,’ I replied. ‘Where are we going?’
His smile broadened. ‘You’ll see.’ He went back into his apartments, and then emerged with a fat set of saddlebags slung over his shoulder. I wanted to ask what was in them, but I knew he was enjoying making his revelations as we went along. I held my tongue.
It had been some days since I’d ridden Sirlofty. Ever a willing mount, he reached for the bit, eager to go. Duril had the use of a clay-coloured gelding. As we stood together in the paddock, saddling our mounts, we both glanced at one another. Then, as one, we made the ‘keep fast’ sign over the cinches. I feared it would soon be an empty ritual, with no more true power than the acorns that some troopers carried for luck in finding shade at the day’s end. We mounted, he took the lead and I followed.
We struck the river road, and travelled east for a short way before Duril turned his horse away from the river to follow a dusty, rutted trail. We topped a small rise, and in the distance I saw the Bejawi village. An upthrust of stone granted it some respite from the endless sweep of the prairie winds. Brush grew in the shelter of the stone barrier, and even a few trees. My father had chosen the location for it and laid out the original village for them. My father’s men had built the dozen houses that stood in two neat rows. At least twice that number of traditional Bejawi tents surrounded the houses. ‘Is that where we’re going? The Bejawi village?’
Duril gave a nod, silently watching me.
‘Why?’
‘Talk to some Kidona there.’
‘In the Bejawi village? What are they doing there? Kidona and Bejawi are traditional enemies. And the Kidona don’t have villages. The only reason the Bejawi live here is that my father built it for them and they had nowhere else to go.’
‘And wasn’t that a rousing success?’ Duril asked with quiet sarcasm.
I knew what he meant but was still a bit shocked to hear him say something even mildly negative about my father.
In the era before the Gernian expansion the plainspeople had been nomads. Different tribes followed different livelihoods. Some herded sheep or goats. Others followed the migrations of the herd deer that roamed the plains and plateaus, supplementing that meat with the gardens they planted in one season and harvested in another. Some of them built temporary mud huts along the river, little caring that they did not last long. The plainspeople had few towns or what we Gernians would recognize as one. They built a few monuments, such as the Dancing Spindle. They kept rendezvous points where they came together each year to trade and negotiate marriages and truces, but for the most part they wandered. To a Gernian eye, it meant that the plains remained an empty place, unclaimed and scarcely used by the migratory folk that criss-crossed it in patterns that were generations old. Such land was ripe for settling, awaiting development of its full potential. The plainsmen, I suspected, saw it differently.
Our ‘tame’ Bejawi, as my father referred to them, were an experiment that had largely failed. He went into it with good intentions. When he set out to save them, the Bejawi had been reduced to mostly women, children and old men. The Bejawi had been herders; killing their herds and a generation of their men had been the fastest way to subdue them. Deprived of their livelihood, the Bejawi were reduced to being thieves and beggars. My father took them in. Not all of them were willing to surrender their old ways in exchange for what he offered. My father bribed them with his promise that he would not let them starve. He had a village built for them, two rows of simple sturdy cottages. He gave them two teams of oxen, a plough and seed for a crop.
Within two weeks, they had eaten the oxen and most of the seed grain. He then gave them goats, with far better success. Perhaps the goats reminded them of the woolly antelope they had once tended. Those creatures were extinct now, slaughtered during our running battles with the Bejawi. The boys took the goats to pasture each day and brought them back. The animals yielded meat, hides, and milk. When last I had discussed them with my father, he admitted that he still had to supplement their food supplies, but that some of the women were learning to make a cheese that he hoped they would be able to market. But in other areas, his success was more