213 - The pain that eases conscience

You can be away from home, and hear that it has all been changed, and brace yourself to see it, but still the idea remains inside that it is somehow just as it was, since that is the memory you have of it. I knew I would be shocked, but I still was.

Of course my first sight of Yeola-e wasn’t much, a deserted rocky beach south of Selina, in the dead of night. We would not risk going through the harbour; it seemed too likely that the Arkans knew I was on a cormarenc, and so they might well be turning every one that came into every Yeoli port town inside out. It wasn’t as if we needed an inn when the door of virtually any house we found would be thrown open to us ecstatically; there is the advantage in sneaking overland in your own country.

We were cautious though, travelling by night always, staying out of big cities, scouting local people who could steer us away from those who might be compromised; I had to accept that even among Yeolis there were those whom terror could make into traitors. Even by starlight I could see the road-signs with Arkan lettering, the walls where there should be none, the gibbets with hanging corpses in village squares. What was perhaps most awful was that my own who were with me didn’t seem even to notice these things.

The army was camped high on the pass near Ossotyeya, as I’d heard, pinned there by a greater Arkan one, which forced us to go around the back way to it, taking several climbs through passes almost too high for trees, so that the forest was up to our waists. Here we could travel by day, but on the last night we were close enough that I ordered push through, and we came in in the death-hour. Feeling we were cause enough to wake up Emao-e, I talked her guards into letting me in, knelt beside her bedroll and barked, as I had once before, “Fourth Chevenga reporting for duty, General First!” Just as before, she bounced about a foot up off the ground, roaring “Shit-britches, boy, I never know when you’re going to oh my All-Spirit, Chevenga!” and seized me in a furious hug.

The command council was only seven people, and I saw some missing who should be here, which told me the worst. In those who were left, I saw a deeper fatigue than from having been awakened too early, and new scars here and there. We’d all aged ten years in two, losing despite giving our utmost.

The smiles at me were desperate, the eyes naked with the thought, You are our last hope. I saw in Hurai’s the thought, I hope I taught him well enough. Jinai Oru, who looked the same—nothing could age or tire him—gave me a rib-cracking hug and said, “I told them you’d be back.”

So I sat them all down and said, “Let me tell you what I’ve been doing, between Haiu Menshir and here.” They hadn’t even heard of the battle of Haiu Menshir, I saw by the first shock, and the subsequent delight. As I listed everything off, totaling the numbers we would have, weight seemed to lift off their shoulders. We were so far gone that I don’t think shame for needing allies even occurred to them.

The rest of my family was in Kefara, about two days north; Assembly stayed and met where it could, in tents and on pastures. Renaina Chaer was still keeping the New Mountains to the south free, with her usual ghost and lightning tactics. This army was, as Krero had told me, seven thousand. It made me feel weak and sick to think of it: of all the warriors of Yeola-e who’d faced Arko on land, each the fruit of ten years of toil and sweat in training, only about ten thousand remained.

“Well, yes and no,” Emao-e pointed out to me, when I said this. “It’s been close to two years; everyone who was fourteen at the start is sixteen now, and there’s been a lot of secret training. Besides, there are those who lay low after they scattered, or recovered from wounds; if we start winning back, we’ll gather joiners.”

“If?” I said. “I know it’s been hard for you, all of you. But there’s no if here.”

I’d wondered if Emao-e might question my taking over the high generalship, either because of my age or that I’d been in the House of Integrity. That had been part of why I’d made my entrance for her the way I had. Now she just said, “A-e kras.”

It was close to dawn. “Tell them only that I am close,” I said. “I have a little business in Kefara, first, then I’ll be back to speak to them. Pick me out ten people who are good runners.” Going as couriers do, we could make two days one. I didn’t say what business; they needed nothing even slightly demoralizing now.

It was hard; I found out how unused to high air I’d got, breathing the thick heavy stuff of Arko and Haiu Menshir, except for when Niku had taken me up high. The secretary of the Arch-Arbitrate was sitting in the temple of Kefara. I knelt before her, took off my Brahvnikian-made signet and said “I have done what warrants impeachment without vote, as well as charges, but I plead extenuating circumstances. I submit myself to the Arch-Arbitrate’s judgment.” He was surprised enough just to see my face; now his jaw dropped open, the look of joy vanishing.

“I have Yeoli blood on my hands,” I told the head judge. “This is a story you should only have to tell once,” she said, and moved to assemble the court. I waited in a monk’s cell, with the bailiff keeping me company. Even chatting with him, I felt fears settle on my heart like mosquitoes on skin. I should have kept quiet, let them stay missing in action forever, as they themselves intended, I thought, sweating. If I were impeached, I could still serve as chakrachaseye if Artira appointed me, but how much would this touch morale? And what if they decided to charge me with murder?

But, in truth, I didn’t have it in me to do differently. Keeping it secret would have haunted me, ruining my own morale, weakening my spirit, hindering my fighting, muddling my plans. The God-in-Me would not send me the flash of inspiration, and without that, we were lost.

A voice came faint through the heavy door of the cell. “Chevenga?” It was Artira. We threw ourselves into each other’s arms, laughing like fifteen years ago, before we’d known what pain was, and crying too. I told her why I was here. She knew I had done it, of course.

We caught up. She’d sent a last letter to me in Arko, that I hadn’t received. I told her I’d accept whatever position was given me. And I said, “I’m sorry I left you with all this mess on your shoulders, Ardi.”

She knew I was the only one she could let show the strain. “Everyone’s been saying, ‘Will Chevenga come back, we’ll be all right with Chevenga back,’ and so on and on,” she said. Everyone loves you and no one loves me. “You can save us, and I can’t, and everyone knows it; how can I not feel I’ve failed?”

“Ardi… you were flung into the avalanche, you didn’t invite it, or even fail to prepare for it. Take two steps back and ask, did I do any more to prevent it than you did, really? We’re all equal in the face of Arkan power.” That helped a little; what helped more was taking her in my arms and letting her cry on my shoulder.

The case required Assembly as well as the Arch-Arbitrate. They set up on a field under the mountain Merahin, and I stood on grass while the charges were read. I was the only witness, but there were Enchian issues of the Pages and the Watcher of the Ring, too. I told the whole story as impassively as I could, which was not very.

Legally, it was all shaky. I should have been charged with eight counts of murder, but was not; the signet I had taken off today was not the official one, as Artira was wearing the one that had been ratified as official, and I had done something that warranted impeachment the moment I did it, so from the Yeoli standpoint, none of my alliances or loans were precisely legal; to reinstate me after this should require a national vote, not just one of Assembly, as those who argued for me asked. In times like these, even the most stiff-mindedly proper look the other way. It could be argued that there was no chance my trial would be fair, when everyone felt so dependent on me. We were so far gone no one argued that. Perhaps it would come back to bite me, some day; now was not the time to worry about it.

When the judges went off to a copse of trees to confer, I heard my name called over the buzz of the crowd. I hadn’t noticed: at its edge were Veraha, my sibs too young to fight, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my spouses and assorted other kin, all waving and blowing me kisses. Shaina lifted over her head a toddler with a thick thatch of black hair: Kima Imaye. I went blind with tears. Fifth wasn’t there, though, and I saw why when I thought about it. He was old enough to understand what I had done, but not why.

I didn’t expect no punishment at all. We might as well be slaves of the Arkans, if we are ever that far gone. They required me to inform the families of the eight myself, and get their wisdom teeth to them when I could; they sentenced me to take eight brand-marks on the face, since that was the Yeoli Mezem custom. But they also recommended Assembly reinstate me as semanakraseye, which they did, almost unanimously. The branding was much lighter than I’d inflicted on other Yeolis in the Mezem, done with wire rather than a rod; the eight lines fit in a space on my left cheek two finger-widths side, as anyone who has met me since knows. Being the pain that eases conscience, it hurt pleasantly.

I slept there the night, spending the evening with family. Now I saw Fifth, so big and with his face so lengthened at the age of six that he looked, to my eyes, like a little man. His dark ringlets hung past his shoulders. He’d proven himself very bright, learning to read and write not long after I’d left, and speaking like a ten-year-old. He’d gripped the sword of Saint Mother, which was held in hiding now, but not lifted it. Still, he told me, “Daddy, I’m going to be as good a warrior as you.”

Azaila had spoken to me about this shortly after I’d brought Fifth home. “You know the odds,” he said. “It’s almost certain your child won’t be as good as you. To expect it of him is to do him wrong.” I already knew that, of course. I’d just said I’d expect his best, no more and no less, and always said the same to Fifth himself. But now here he had this ambition, formed in my absence. I couldn’t single out Esora-e; people always look for missing parents in children.

“Will you train with me tomorrow, Daddy, pleeeeease?” he was saying.

“I have to run back to the army, so I won’t have time, love,” I said. “I have a little time now, though.” There was still a little orange and blue daylight, as we went out on the mountain. I challenged him to a little blind-man’s-bluff, to warm up, I told him. When he was fully blindfolded, I drew Chirel and did a down-cut at his head, a stroke that would have made me leap a pace sideways at his age. There wasn’t even a break in his chatter.

My child, I thought, as he stumbled over the meadow giggling, “I’ll get you, Daddy!”, I took you from your mother, then abandoned you, will abandon you again tomorrow, and then again the final time, before you’re even in your teens. Why did I take you? How could I do you such wrong? I looked ahead in his life, saw him chase the futile goal he’d set his heart on, all or nothing as children do, defeated from the start, with even his name begging comparison. His highest lesson of warcraft would be to abandon it. He was intelligent, too, and therefore sensitive, and when he felt it worst, at sixteen, I wouldn’t even be there. If anything, I would become a curse to him, the summit he failed to reach.

When we were done playing and practicing, I sat down with him under my arm on a rock. “I want to tell you a story, Chevenga—I know, people tell you that can’t be your name, but from me it can, because I alone am not mixing you up with some other Chevenga—about why you are anaraseye. Has anyone told you about that?”

He signed chalk with his smooth little hand, and said “It’s because I’m your eldest child, and you chose for me to.”

“Why do you think I thought you’d make a good semanakraseye? Why do you think that might be?”

“Because you thought I’d be a great warrior, and defeat the savage foreigners?” Definitely, Esora-e had been speaking with him. Already, in that little face so like mine, was tension and doubt I cannot recall feeling, that young. It had been peacetime.

“No,” I said. “That wasn’t it at all. I didn’t choose you for anything I thought you might be someday. I wouldn’t do that. It was for what you were. You think you were too young to prove yourself in anyway, don’t you, love?” He signed chalk, mystified. “But you did. Very well.” And I told him about the toad, on Leyere mountain.

An amazed dawning came into his eyes. He remembered it. Sounding not five years older than he was, but ten, he said, “That’s why you did that.”

“Yes. I’m sorry I frightened you. But if ever in your life anyone says you aren’t good enough, or as good as me, or strong enough, remember this always. You won my approval for being kind-hearted and just-minded. Nothing else, because you need nothing else to be a good semanakraseye. And if, when I’m not here, anyone says I wouldn’t think you are good enough in one thing or another, tell them this: from the day I met you, you were good enough for me, and you always will be.”

He sat gazing at me for a bit, then said, in an eerily-adult manner, “Thank you,” and gave me a neck-crushing hug. All the way back down the mountain, he who was usually so chatter-filled—I don’t know where he got it—was silent in thought.

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