Divided Allegiance

21

Paks took a long breath, clutching the sodden scarf in her hands. “Sir, I—I lost my temper, and was rude to Marshal Cieri, and he doesn’t want me in his class.”

“I see.” His face looked almost as cold as the first day. “And you come to me about it—why? ”

“I thought I should.” She swallowed painfully the lump that had been growing in her throat for the past half-hour. “Sir.”

“You want me to plead for you? Without hearing his story?”

“No, sir.” Why was everyone misunderstanding what she meant? Paks plunged on. “It isn’t that—I thought I was supposed to tell you—”

“He told you to?” That was with raised brows.

“No, sir,” said Paks miserably. “I mean—you’re the Training Master—if this were the Company, I’d have to tell the sergeant—”

His voice gained a hint of warmth. “You’re saying that you are doing what you would have done in Duke Phelan’s Company? Reporting something you did wrong?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see.” His fingers drummed on the desk. “You agree that whatever happened was your fault?”

Paks nodded. Thinking back, she knew that Siger or Stammel would have reacted just as Cieri had—if not worse.

“Well, suppose you tell me about it. And by the way, how did you get hurt?”

“You knew I’d asked to learn axe fighting?” Paks waited for his nod, then went on. “I’d been doing drills with the axe—not hitting anything, and today Marshal Cieri set up a target. A log, with limbs.” Paks stopped. It seemed even worse as she tried to think how to say what had happened.

“Yes?”

“Well—sir—I had trouble with it—he’d said I would—”

“And you lost your temper over that?”

“No, sir. Not then. After awhile I made some chips of it, and then he wanted me to hit specific targets. Only when I started, he—he got after me for not thinking of it as live, for giving it a chance to hit back.” She looked up to see the Training Master’s lips folded tightly. As bad as that, then. She went on. “Then I hit a limb—he said to think of it as an arm—and when I went to hit again, he was angry that I hadn’t allowed for it to move. So I jumped at it, and hit it really hard, and the limb broke and the axe hit my leg.”

“How badly?”

“Just a cut. But then I was angry, and I was about to—to swing as hard as I could, and he stopped the axe.” Paks looked up again. “I didn’t know he could do that.”

“It’s not something we demonstrate very often,” said the Training Master, in a neutral voice. “Go on.”

Paks ducked her head. “Then he said he thought I knew better than to lose my temper, and that I wouldn’t be any good at axe-work, like he’d said. And that’s when—”

“What did you say, Paksenarrion?”

“I said—” she paused to remember the words. “I said I could learn, if he wouldn’t harass me. It—I was wrong, sir, and I know it. I knew it as soon as I said it—”

“Did you apologize?”

“Yes, sir; I told him I was sorry—”

“Did you mean it?”

Paks looked up, startled.

“Were you sorry for being rude, or sorry he was angry with you, or sorry you’d lost your temper in the first place?”

“I—I don’t know, sir. I suppose—I was just sorry about everything.”

“Hmph. So then what happened?”

Paks told the rest as well as she could, and on being prompted added the conversation with the dwarves. When she had finished, the Training Master sighed.

“So you came to me, because you thought you should, and you expect me to do—what? What do you think will happen now?”

Paks met his gaze squarely. “I think you’ll send me away,” she said. “If that’s what all of you think—that it’s unfair to spend the time when I’m not a Girdsman. And even if I were—he said it would be bad—you might still.”

“Do you think we should send you away?”

Paks didn’t know what to say to this. For a moment she looked away, but when her eyes returned to his face it held the same quiet expectancy. She thought the question over. “Sir, I—I don’t know what your rules are—what your limits are. If I do what you don’t want, then of course you have the right to send me away. But I can’t think what is best for you—for the Fellowship. If it is best to, then you will. Otherwise—I don’t know.”

“Well, if you are convinced we will send you away, why come to me? Why not simply go pack your things and leave? Or tell us you’re leaving, and not wait to be dismissed?”

“But—I couldn’t do that. It would be—” She could not think of the right words; she knew it would be wrong, and somehow worse than wrong. “Discourteous,” she finally said. “Ungrateful. It’s my fault, and you have the right; I don’t.”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure I follow your reasoning, Paksenarrion. You agree that we have the right to dismiss you, if you displease us—but you think you have no right to withdraw?”

“If I didn’t want to stay—or if something happened, perhaps to my family or something—then I could, but it wouldn’t be fair to—to walk out when it was my fault.”

He pounced on that. “Fair. You’re trying to be what you think is fair?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you said ‘if I didn’t want to stay’—does that mean you do want to stay?”

“Of course I do,” said Paks, louder than she’d meant to.

“There’s no ‘of course’ to it,” he replied crisply. “Many who come here to train don’t like it, and don’t want to stay. Are you saying that even after Cieri’s thrown you out of his class—in front of everyone—you’d still prefer to stay here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

Her hands twitched. “It’s—it’s what I always wanted to learn. These weeks have been the best of my life.”

“Until today.”

“Yes, sir.” Then she looked at him again. “If I could stay—today is not much, really—”

“Oh?” His brows went up again; Paks’s heart sank. “You call an axe wound, and having the senior weaponsmaster refuse to have you in his class ‘not much’? We have different views, Paksenarrion.”

“I’m—”

“You’re sorry. I’m sure.” He sighed again. “Paksenarrion, we accept occasional outsiders—non-Girdsmen—because we know that good hearts and good fighters may choose another patron. You have an unusual background; it may be that you have seen that which makes today seem minor to you. But to us it is important. We have all watched you, for these weeks, and been puzzled. You are capable, intelligent, hardworking, physically superior to most of the others. You have gotten along with the others, juniors and seniors both. You don’t brawl, get into arguments, get drunk, or try to seduce the Marshals. If you were a Girdsman, we would be more than pleased with your progress. Yet you have reserves, you harbor mysteries, which we cannot fathom. All our skills say these are not evil—yet great evil has been known to masquerade as good, just as a beautiful cloak can cover an evil man. This—today—is the first chink in your behavior. Is it characteristic? Is this the true Paksenarrion coming out? And why have you refused to make any commitment? Marshal Cieri does, in this way, speak for all of us. We would welcome you gladly as a knight-candidate—perhaps more—if you were of the Fellowship of Gird. But until you show us some willingness to give in return for what you are given—more than that surface pleasantness you have shown, I must concur with him.”

Paks sat still, unable to move or speak. She had never really believed that anyone could think she was evil. She longed to be back with the Duke’s Company, where Stammel, she was sure, would defend her against any such accusation. Why had she ever left that safe haven? Into that shock, her leg intruded, throbbing more insistently. She blinked a few times, and lifted her head.

“Yes, sir,” she said, through stiff lips. “I—I will go pack.”

“Gird’s right arm!” The Training Master’s voice must have echoed through the entire first floor. “That’s not what I said, girl!” Paks stared at him. “You have the choice—make it!”

“Choice?” Paks could not think.

“You can become a Girdsman,” said the Training Master crisply. “Has that not occurred to you?”

“No,” said Paks with more honesty than tact.

“Then it should have. By the gods, girl, you think better than that in tactics class. You recognize what the problem is: you want to stay for more training, and we are unwilling to give more training without some return. How much do you want to stay? What are you willing to give? And what did you want the training for, if not to follow Gird?”

Paks felt her heart pounding so that she could scarcely draw breath. “You mean I could join—but if you think I’m bad, why would you—”

The Training Master gave a disgusted snort. “I didn’t say I thought you were evil. I said it was a possibility. Do you want to join the Fellowship of Gird? Will you pay that price?”

“I—” Paks choked a moment and went on. “Sir, I want to stay. If that is what—but will Gird accept it?”

“We can talk of Gird himself later, Paksenarrion. What we, the Marshals, are looking for is something less than what Gird may ask. Is it something your Duke told you, that makes you dislike Gird so? Or have you another patron you haven’t told us about?”

Paks shook her head. “No, sir. It’s nothing like that; all I have been told of Gird I admire, and here you teach that Gird is a servant of the High Lord, not a god to worship instead of him. But—” She could not explain the obscure reserve and resentment she felt, and worked her way toward it haltingly. “When I was in the Duke’s Company, I knew Girdsmen. Effa was killed in her first battle—but that doesn’t matter. I think it was when Canna was captured and killed. She was a Girdsman, but it didn’t help. She died, and not in clean battle, even though we were trying to reach the Duke, and tell him about Siniava’s capture of the fort. If Gird saved anyone, why not Canna, his own yeoman? Why me?”

“You don’t like the notion that great deeds reward the hero with a quick death?”

Paks shook her head more vigorously. “No, sir. And hers wasn’t quick, by what I was told. Capture, and a bad wound—that’s no reward for faithful service. And she was the one hit at the fort itself, by a stray arrow. Why didn’t Gird protect her then? She kept us together, led the way—it should have been her chance, that last day, not mine.” She felt the old anger smouldering still, and fought it down. “And more than that—the captain said it was probably Canna’s medallion that saved me from death in Rotengre—but I’m a soldier. Why didn’t Gird save the slave, or the baby? Why did they have to die?” Now more scenes from Aarenis recurred: the child in Cha, the frightened rabble in Sibili, Cal Halveric’s drawn face, old Harek dying after torture. And worse things, from the coastal campaign. She set her jaw, feeling once more that old sickness and revulsion, that helpless rage at injustice, that had driven her from the Duke’s Company to travel alone.

The Training Master nodded slowly; she could see nothing mocking in his face. “Indeed, Paksenarrion, you ask hard questions. Let me answer the easiest one first. You ask why Gird did not save his own yeoman, and the answer to that is that Girdsmen are called to save others, not be saved.” He held up his hand to stop the questions that leaped into her mouth. “No—listen a moment. Of this I am sure, both from the archives and from my own knowledge. Gird led unarmed farmers into battle with trained soldiers—do you think they won their freedom without loss? Of course not. Even the yeomen of Gird—even the novice members of the Fellowship—have to accept a soldier’s risks. Above that level, as yeoman-marshal, Marshal, High Marshal, and so on—and as paladin—Girdsmen know that their lives are forfeit in need. Gird protects others through the Fellowship—he does not protect the Fellowship as a shepherd protects sheep. We are all his shepherds, you might say.”

Paks thought about that. “But Canna—”

“Was your friend, and you mourn her. That is good. But as a yeoman of Gird, she risked and gave her life to save others—or that’s what it sounds like you’re saying.”

“It’s true.”

“Now—about those innocents who are not Girdsmen, and are killed. This is why the Fellowship of Gird trains every yeoman—to prevent just that. But in many lands we are few—our influence is small—”

“But why can’t Gird do it himself, if he’s—”

“Paksenarrion, you might as well ask why it snows in winter. I did not make the world, or men, or elves, or the sounds the harp makes when you pluck the strings. All I know is that the High Lord expects all his creatures to choose good over evil; he has given us heroes to show the way, and Gird is one of these. Gird has shown men how to fight and work for justice in the face of oppression: that was his genius. It is not the only genius, nor dare I say it is the best; only the High Lord can judge rightly. But as followers of Gird, we try to act as he did. Sometimes we receive additional aid. Why it comes one time and not another, or why it comes to one Marshal and not another, I cannot say. Nor can you. Nor will you ever know, Paksenarrion, until you pass beyond death to the High Lord’s table, if that happens.” He gave her a long look. “And I think that you blame Gird because you are still blaming yourself for these deaths. Is that not so?”

Paks looked down. She could still hear Canna’s voice, that last yell: “Run, Paks!” And she had run. She could still hear the others. “It might be,” she said finally.

“Paksenarrion, Gird does not kill the helpless—someone alive, with a sword or club or stone, does that. If you still think, after the time you have been here, that the followers of Gird act that way—”

“No, sir!”

“—then you should leave at once. But if you see us trying to teach men and women how to live justly together, and defend their friends and families against the misuse of force, then consider if that is not your aim as well. Gird may ask your life, someday, but Gird will never ask you to betray a friend, or injure a helpless child. Consider the acts of your Girdish friend, and not her death, and ask yourself if these were good or bad.”

“Good,” said Paks at once. “Canna was always generous.”

“And so you are rejecting Gird because he has not acted as you would—is that it?”

Paks had not thought that clearly about it. Put that way it seemed arrogant, to say the least. “Well—I suppose I was.”

“You are not rejecting his principles, it seems, but the fact that they aren’t carried out?”

Paks nodded slowly, still thinking.

“Then it seems, Paksenarrion, that you ought to be willing to try to carry them out.” His mouth quirked in a smile. “If the rest of us are doing so badly.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“I thought you just did. However—” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “If you don’t think we are too corrupt, perhaps you will give us the benefit of your judgment—”

“Sir!” Paks felt her eyes sting; her head was whirling already.

“I’m sorry.” He actually sounded sorry. “I went too far, perhaps—I forgot your leg. We’ll talk again later—we must get you upstairs and let the surgeon see that.”

“See what?” A voice in the doorway interrupted. Paks tried to turn her head, but felt too dizzy. Her ears roared.

“She’s got a small wound, Arianya,” said the Training Master.

“Not that small,” said the voice. “It’s bled all over your floor, Chanis. Better take a look.”

Paks tried to focus on the Training Master as he came back around the desk to kneel beside her chair. Her eyes blurred. She heard the two Marshals talking, and then another excited voice, and then felt a wave of nausea that nearly emptied her stomach. She clamped her jaw against that, and roused enough to know that they were carrying her along the passage. Finally the motion stopped, and her stomach quieted. When she got her eyes working again, she was lying flat on a bed, staring at the ceiling. Her mouth was dry, and tasted bad. She rolled her head to one side. That was a mistake. Her stomach heaved, and she hardly noticed the pail someone pushed under her mouth until she was through.

From a distance, someone said, “If she had the sense to match her guts, she’d be fine—”

“I don’t call fainting from a simple cut like that guts, Chanis.”

“She didn’t, and you know it. We all pushed as hard as—”

“Well, however you say it. I still think—”

Closer, someone called her name. “Paksenarrion? Come on now, quit scaring us.” She felt a cup at her lips, and drank a swallow of cold water. Her stomach churned, but accepted it. She opened her eyes again to see the Marshal-General’s flint-gray eyes watching her. Before anyone else could speak, Paks managed to force out her own message.

“I want to join—the Fellowship—even if you send me away.”

Silence followed this. The Marshal-General stared at her. Finally she spoke.

“Why now?”

“Because I was wrong about him—Gird. And so—and so I want to join, and do better.”

“Even if I send you away? Even if you never go beyond yeoman?”

“Yes.” Paks felt as stubborn now on this ground as she had before on others.

“I hope you feel the same when you’ve remade a couple of skins of blood.” The Marshal-General sat back, and grinned. “Gird’s ten fingers! Did you have to lose half the blood in your body to learn sense?”

“I didn’t,” said Paks. She had the curious feeling that her body was floating just above the bed. She knew she understood more than the others, only it was hard to speak. “It isn’t lost—it’s not in the same place, is all.”

“And you’re wound-witless. All right. If you still want to make your vows when you’re strong enough, I daresay Gird will accept them. But that will be some time, Paksenarrion. For now you must rest, and obey the surgeons.”

Not until some days later did Paks hear the full story of that day. She had had no visitors at first but the surgeons, the Training Master, and the Marshal-General. Finally the surgeons agreed that she could move back to her own room. She was surprised at how shaky she felt after climbing the stairs—from one simple cut, she thought. She sat down hard on her bed, head whirling, and leaned back against the pillows. Rufen and Con woke her some time later when they discovered her door open and looked in to see why.

“Paks?”

She woke with a start; the last sunlight came through her window. “Oh—I forgot to shut the door.”

“Are you all right? You look pale as cheese,” said Con. Paks gave him a long stare.

“I’m fine. I just—dozed off.”

“The Training Master said you were back. He said not to bother you, but your door was open—”

“That’s all right.” Paks pushed herself up. She wondered what they were thinking about, and felt her ears going hot.

“I’ve never been so mad in my life,” said Con, moving into the room to sit at her desk. “I’d have taken Cieri apart if I could have—”

“Instead of which, he dumped you—how many times?” Rufen leaned against the doorframe, smiling.

“That doesn’t matter. Listen, Paks, if they’d thrown you out, I’d have—have—”

Paks shook her head. “Con—it’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. It wasn’t fair—we could all see that. I couldn’t believe it, the way he hounded you—and you the best of us. Gird’s flat feet, but I’d have blown up at him days before.”

Paks stared at him in surprise. “But I thought you’d be on their side—I thought you’d agree that it wasn’t fair for me to be here as an outsider.”

Con shrugged. “That! What difference does that make? I’ve been a Girdsman all my life, and I never will be as good a fighter as you are. It’s not as if you were bad: you don’t quarrel even as much as I do. No one’s ever found you doing something underhand or cowardly. They ought to be glad you’re willing to come here at all. And that’s what I told him.”

“And then what?” Paks could not imagine that scene at all.

“And then he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about, and until I did I should kindly keep to my own business, and I told him my friends were my business. And he said I should choose my friends with care, and I said I’d learned more from you since you’d come than from him since I’d been here—” Con stopped, blushing scarlet.

“And then,” Rufen put in with a wide grin, “then Cieri said maybe he should have long yellow hair to catch Con’s attention, and Con swung on him, and ended up flat on his back. Cieri asked the others what they thought, and apparently everyone was on your side. I wish I’d been there—I knew I’d regret being in that lower class after you got here. I don’t know if I could have done any more, but—”

“But you shouldn’t have,” said Paks, looking at Con. “He’s—he’s the weaponsmaster, you shouldn’t argue with him.”

“But he was wrong,” said Con stubbornly, his eyes glinting. “Paks, if you’ve got a fault it’s that you’re too willing to be ruled. I know what you’ll say—you’ll say that’s how a good soldier is. Maybe so, for a mercenary company. But we’re Girdsmen; Gird himself said that every yeoman must think for himself. I don’t care if Cieri is the weaponsmaster, or the Training Master, or the Marshal-General, if he’s wrong, he’s wrong, and if I think he’s wrong I should say so.”

“Just because you think he is wrong doesn’t make him wrong,” argued Paks. “How do you know you’re right?”

“I can tell unfairness when I see it,” growled Con.

“How do you know?” Paks persisted. “Sometimes things seem unfair when they happen, but later you can tell they weren’t—so how do you know when something is truly unfair?”

“Well, when it’s—I mean—by Gird, Paks, it’s easier to know than to say. I know Cieri was unfair to you; he kept picking at you, trying to make you mad, and then when you got mad he blamed you for it. And you were hurt, dripping blood all over, and he didn’t even offer to heal it for you.”

Paks shrugged. “If he thought I was wrong, he wouldn’t.”

“But it was his fault. And so it wasn’t fair. Don’t you know anything? Didn’t you ever have brothers or someone in your Company that kept trying to put things on you—surely you know what I mean.”

Paks shrugged again. “Con, I know enough to know that looking for the final fault, who’s really to blame, just keeps trouble alive longer. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, no matter what. If he was wrong to push me that far, it was still my fault. And the Marshal-General told me when I came that they were reluctant to train someone who had given no vows of service.”

“But now you’re joining the Fellowship, is that right?” asked Rufen.

“Yes. The surgeon says I should be up to a bout at Midwinter Feast.”

“How bad is your leg?”

“Not bad. They stitched it up; it’s healing clean. It’s mostly blood loss; I should have tied it up tighter to begin with.” Then she thought of something else. “Con—did some dwarves show up at the field after I left?”

Con looked startled. “How did you know about them?” Then he grinned broadly. “That was something, let me tell you. Two of ’em came marching up, right into the class, in the middle of the row we were—anyway, came into the class, and interrupted us. I can’t talk like they do—all that ‘it is that’ and ‘is it that it is’—but the long and short of it was that Cieri had asked them to come and demonstrate axe fighting, and they were ready. Cieri told them he’d dismissed his student, and they grumped about being called out for nothing. So he said they could show the rest of us, and they glared around and said they wouldn’t show anyone who didn’t have the guts to learn. One of them challenged Cieri himself. Well, we saw some axe-fighting, let me tell you, and that axe you were using won’t ever be the same.”

Paks felt a guilty twinge of satisfaction. She tried to conceal it; Con needed no encouragement. “Is Master Cieri all right?”

“Oh, yes. He got a scratch or two, but you know he can heal that—it’s nothing to him. Anyway, now that you’re joining the Fellowship, you’ll be coming back to class, won’t you?”

“I suppose. I haven’t seen Master Cieri.” Paks wondered if he would hold a grudge against her.

“You are staying, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll be back with us. That’ll be good. And listen, Paks, you keep in mind what I said. As a yeoman, you have a right to think for yourself. You’re supposed to—”

“I do,” said Paks. “You—”

“You do, and then you don’t. I know what you’re thinking, about me and the juniors, and you were right, there. You stand against us—the others in the class—when you think differently. But you don’t stand against anyone over you—I’ll bet you never argued with your sergeant, or captain, or the Duke—”

Paks found herself smiling. She could not imagine Con arguing with Stammel more than once, let alone with Arcolin. But she defended herself. “I did argue with the Duke once—well, not exactly argue—”

“Once!” Con snorted. “And he was wrong only once in three years? That’s a record.”

She shook her head at him; it was useless to try to explain. She tried anyway. “Con—privates don’t argue with commanders. Not unless it’s very important, and usually not then. And we don’t see everything, we can’t know when the commander is wrong.”

“So what did you argue—not exactly—about?”

Paks froze. She had never meant to get close to that night in Aarenis again. “I—you don’t need to know,” she said lamely.

“Come on, Paks. I can’t imagine you arguing with anyone like that—it must have been something special. What was it? Was he going to start worshipping Liart, or something?”

Paks closed her eyes a moment, seeing Siniava stretched on the ground, the Halverics at his side, the angry paladin confronting her Duke. She heard again the taut silence that followed the Duke’s outburst, and felt the weight of his eyes on her. “I can’t tell you,” she said hoarsely. “Don’t ask me, Con; I can’t tell you.”

“Paks,” said Rufen quietly. “You don’t look ready for supper in the hall; we’ll bring something up for you.” His gentle understanding touched her; she opened her eyes to see them both looking worried.

“I’m all right,” she said firmly.

“You’re all right, but you’re not well. If you’re to make your vows at the Midwinter Feast, you don’t need to be scurrying up and down stairs again today. It’s no trouble—” he went on, waving her to silence. “If we go now, we can all eat up here in peace. Come on, Con.” And the two of them went out, closing her door softly and leaving her to her thoughts.