Inheritance Paid

The Fifth Anecdote of The Samyuzot.

The Samyuzot is a loosely-connected set of stories following the life of a cursed warrior, cast off by his people and sent to wander in exile.

This is the fifth anecdote in the collection.

Every story in the series is stand-alone. There’s no need to catch up and new readers won’t be lost.

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The night before the battle, the men gathered around their campfires and tried to distract themselves from the morning’s inevitability. The soldiers went to great lengths to speak about anything other than the combat to come. They spoke about their time in the company and their half-forgotten homes. They spoke about food. Mostly, they spoke about women.

The men around this particular fire were mercenaries. For them this war had no Cause to speak of, no high-minded rationale like duty or honor. They were here for pay and pay alone. Not a word was spoken that night about Guarin Guiffard, their employer, nor about Duke Rolant of Arlemón, whose army was camped opposite the field. These were only abstract names to these men, barely known. But they knew too well that the storm of high-born whims could still shipwreck many lives such as their own, and leave death in its path. However distant the roots of conflict between the Guiffardings and the Arlemóntines, the battle tomorrow would be very close to these men indeed. The collected thought went unspoken.

Instead, they drank and laughed and spoke of sweethearts past and present. They spoke of their lovers with affection, rue, and no small amount of exaggeration. They tried to pretend that none of them would be crying out for their own mothers in the morning’s work.

One by one the speakers drifted away towards their bedrolls. They lied to themselves and said they would sleep.

They left until only three remained. Arnand was a newer member of the company, but of nervous character; of all the men who had passed the evening here his agitation was the most visible. Tonight he laughed far too quickly, and his talk was frenetic. Arnand’s remaining partners, however, were poor conversationalists. First was Simeot the scout, a laconic man from the lower plains whose grasp of Arnand’s Maretonian language was still rough, even after a decade or more in this country. His face was like stone, his head bald, and his wiry beard beginning to gray. Rarely was there ever a face less friendly.

But the last loiterer would be no use at all: an eleven-year-old boy who had been following their company for several weeks and who was entirely dumb. The men called him Sourdy.

As if it was the mute boy himself who was forcing it into the air, a silence pervaded the area and worked its way into Arnand’s ear. It made his legs twitch. The other two just stared into the fire. When Arnand could stand it no longer, he looked up at Simeot and came to the thing itself.

“They say the Duke’s army is larger than ours,” he said. This earned only a shrug from the scout. “Though I suppose there are always such rumors before a battle. Have you been in many battles with Farild?”

Simeot turned his tongue over in his mouth, as if the question had a foul taste. It was a moment before he said: “No. Just the normal scraps, same as you. Only more of them.”

“But you’ve been with the captain at least as long as anyone else. Except Irner.”

“And Jovin. And Stigand.”

“Fine, them as well—but if you’ve been with the company that long, then you must’ve been at Erkanbren. And the siege of Calver, and Mornoc before that?”

Simeot’s eyebrows went up. “Hmm. I’d forgotten about Calver.”

“And Farild’s Hundred was at the Battle of Limane, wasn’t it?”

“Well, it was more like Farild’s five-and-twenty back then. It’s only lately that the captain’s brought all you kids into it.”

“And what about the Erkanbren campaign?”

“Erkenbren wasn’t as dangerous as some say. None of them were. At Calver and Mornoc we went after wagon drivers and watched the outer fences. We never even saw the battle at Limane. We guarded the camp.”

“What?” Arnand was distressed. “Why?”

“Because we were told to. Have you seen the count’s men? Or any lord’s? We are not like them. Knights and warriors do most of the fighting on important days. The peasants dig ditches and spend themselves in the melee. But war is more than battle. It is guarding, scouting, taking food, sending messages. That is what we do. We are useful. Not as proud as knights. Not as useless as peasants.”

Arnand was silent for a long time. Sourdy the mute got up from where he sat and stirred the coals of the fire. His eyes went back and forth between the two men. Though he never spoke, he could hear well enough. He was always listening.

“Tomorrow will go poorly, then,” Arnand said. “I thought I was going to be fighting alongside real warriors. I thought I was the only one who had never—”

“We’ve been in plenty of fights,” Simeot replied. “You’ve been in enough of them yourself. How long’ve you been with us now, a year?”

“Six months.”

“Mmm. Even so. We’ve had plenty of work since then.”

“No work like this. Not a real battle.”

They watched the coals. There was very little snoring happening around them in the camp. There were other hushed conversations besides their own. Men were rustling in their rolls.

“Tomorrow,” Simeot looked straight at the younger Arnand, “keep your head up. Keep your feet planted. Do what you’re told. You’ll come out of it.”

Anand swallowed, nodded. “Then what?”

“We celebrate, we get paid, we relax, we get ready for the next.” Though his words were nonchalant, an intensity was rising in the scout’s words.

“For the next?”

“Yes.”

“Then the next and the next and the next,” Arnand was turning inward. “Where does it end for men like us, if not in the midst of some day like tomorrow?”

Simeot lunged up and over to Arnand. He lifted the man up by his shirt and snarled into his face. “You say no more. The others can hear you. Be quiet.”

He shoved Arnand back down so hard that Arnand lost his wind. Then Simeot stalked off into the shadows.

When he finally brought himself to his blankets at the edge of camp near where his own horses were posted, he lay awake for a long while. But it was not the threat of battle that kept him up. It was Arnand’s question.

✹ ✹ ✹

In the morning, the Duke of Arlemón brought his troops forth from his camp and into fighting array. He offered battle to the Guiffardings. Count Guarin responded in kind. Two thousand men readied themselves for the slaughter.

The Duke of Arlemón surveyed the field with his knights.

“There, sir,” said one of them, pointing to a dark banner near the extreme left of the enemy battle-line. “I don’t recognize that device, but those men seem to be in poor order.”

“Indeed, you are correct,” said the Duke. He thought for a while, then drew his sword. “Lord Gerin! Take the main force down the center and engage. I will strike there, and I shall do it just before your men engage. We will drive a wedge between them, and they shall collapse. Follow me into the gap, my friends! For honor and Arlemón!”

“For honor and Arlemón!” rose the cry.

On the opposite side of the field, Count Guarin had entrusted his fortunes to the expertise of his captains, including the obscure mercenary captain, Farild, who had promised again and again the stoutheartedness of his troops. Guarin subsequently promised a great sum to the captain, and placed Farild’s company at a vital place near the edge of his line.

Which was why, when sixty heavily armed knights broke off from the Arlemóntine line and charged unexpectedly into the ranks of Count Guarin’s men, it was poor, nervous Arnand who was the first to die.

A spear took him in the chest, and his body was trampled only a second later in the crash of horses and men.

There was no room at all between one rider and the next; they formed a wall of muscle and metal which moved faster than a man could run. There was nowhere to go. No way to resist. And there was no barrier to the horsemen’s progress except the frightened pack of fragile men.

The wave of death crashed over Farild’s Hundred. Splinters flew like arrows. Blood spouted like rain. Men fell like wheat before the scythe. The noise was fearsome and wretched.

An arrow took the life of Arnand’s killer, its point finding the knight’s exposed face and adding a falling body to the melee.

Simeot drew another arrow and loosed. He was at the back of the formation, near the trees, shooting missiles into the horsemen as fast as he could. But the enemies had arrived even faster. Simeot loosed again.

His arrows glanced off helmets and stuck into shields. Some stopped in nets of chainmail and became like branches jutting from monstrous, iron trees. The trees twisted and bent in the gale, swinging their boughs up and around and down again, bringing thorn and blade to the chaff below them.

It only took seconds for the front half of Farild’s company to be entirely overwhelmed by the force of the charge. Even after culling fifty men, the horses were still pushing. Hooves landed on bone where they could not find grass. Gore flew up with earth; the duke and his men were like a mudslide, inevitable in its weight, moving uphill against the very laws of the universe.

Simeot aimed and shot, aimed and shot. With each arrow he saw the backs of his comrades. Arnand was now a world away on the far side of the horsemen. He saw Jovin’s helmet fly away, and his bare head open up. Irner, the loyal deputy, screamed defiance as he fell. Simeot loosed a dart at his killer and saw it disappear into horse-flesh. Captain Farild was nowhere to be seen.

Simeot saw their faces now, not only their backs. Farild’s Hundred were turning away, running. Once a few broke away, the rest could not resist their panic.

Half of them were already under the hooves of the Arlemóntines. Flight did not save those who were close to the press.

The wall was close now, and the noise deafening. Simeot was aiming again when one of his comrades crashed into him and sent his arrow sailing high. Another man slammed into him and they fell to the earth together.

The ground shook.

A scream and a horse's whine.

Simeot tried to stand, and then remembered no more.

✹ ✹ ✹

There was pain, and something that approximated waking up. Simeot tensed, moved a hand in the darkness to his face. His shoulder shot pain into his chest at the movement. He opened to the light that was burning his eyelids. It was hard to see. Daylight, blurring his vision. His head was pounding.

Simeot forced himself to roll away from the weight that was on top of him. The weight rolled off. On his hands and knees, he squinted at the thing and saw a bright red gash through brown clothing. His mind first remembered the days of skinning shorthorns for food in the mountains. Had he been hunting? Then he remembered leaving the mountains, and the many years since, and then finally the battle.

Panic lit its flame among the pain in his body. He stood up, fell down for his leg would not take the weight. Wounded? Broken? Asleep? His hip ached so much he could not bring himself to try standing on it again.

He shambled, half-crawling, away towards the shadows of trees.

He saw no one living. He went over bodies and the carcass of a horse. There was noise, men shouting somewhere in the distance. Simeot’s stumbling weight carried him forward.

He made it back to the camp, and to the fire where he’d sat the night before. He looked from there and saw, with great relief, his own horses still tied to its post. The red stallion, the palfrey, and his packhorse. He waved to them as he let himself collapse beside the firepit. His body pulled his eyes closed. He felt very cold.

Who were those men shouting? And was that… singing?

Darkness took him again.

✹ ✹ ✹

Against all evidence of the battle’s outset, it was in fact the Guiffardings who won the day. The duke’s cavalry had indeed smashed through Farild’s Hundred, but this was foreseen. The charge had disordered the duke’s knights, and when they entered the wood behind the line they found Guarin’s trap. A reserve of the count’s own knights waited there, and drove them off, nearly capturing the Duke Rolant himself.

The Arlemóntine infantry, meanwhile, were too slow in their advance. The main engagement did not commence until the duke had disappeared behind the trees. When, later on, it was the Count of Guiffard’s knights who came out of the woods alone, the duke’s men despaired for their lord’s life, and wavered.

The field belonged now to the Guiffardings.

The count’s men congratulated him on his victory, especially for his cleverness in drawing in the over-eager duke by fielding such disorderly thugs as Farild’s mercenaries. A stroke of genius, they said, to lure the enemy commander through the battle lines and away from his men.

Farild, they knew, might seek retribution. Mercenaries were a temperamental lot. But that did not matter. Victory within victory! It appeared that the good captain, and indeed all his men, were now among the dead.

✹ ✹ ✹

Simeot awoke to find the boy Sourdy shaking his shoulder. It was less the movement and more the overwhelming ache that arose from it that woke the man.

The boy wiped something on the plainsman’s face. The rag carried away red and brown grime. Then the boy tugged at Simeot’s sleeve a few times.

“What is it?” moaned the man.

The boy stood and tugged again. Simeot got himself seated up, but groaned at the pain. He clenched his jaw against a whimper, pulled breath into his nose and ribcage, steadied. When he looked up at Sourdy again the boy was gesturing for him to follow.

In the end the boy had to help lift the stocky man.

“Where is everyone?” There was no one else in the camp. Only a few horses besides Simeot’s own tied up at the posts. “What happened?”

Sourdy pointed away and Simeot followed his finger. Deeper in the trees in their own camp, there were the green-clad Guiffardings, hollering to one another. Jubilation. Relief. Merriment.

“We won?”

Sourdy’s expression said nothing. He again gestured Simeot to follow, then went off toward the battlefield.

✹ ✹ ✹

“Farild!” Simeot gasped at the body that Sourdy had indicated. Not a body, but a living man. The scout knelt against the protestations of his hip and put his hands on the captain. There was a pulse, but not much of one. There was blood around his neck: a wound at his collarbone from where a blade had gotten under his mail.

Sourdy wiped the captain’s face with his rags. Under the sweat and blood, Farild’s face was whiter than snow.

They managed to get him up by draping Farild’s arms across their shoulders. The captain’s feet dragged, for he was much taller than Simeot, even when the plainsman wasn’t shambling. Simeot could hardly manage the weight, but the mute boy was some help. They made for camp.

“Once we—get him cleaned—” Simeot said through the effort, “we’ll get help—and come back for—the others.”

Sourdy shook his head from under Farild’s other arm.

“Wh—What do you mean?—We have to—to try.”

The boy shook his head again, then pulled a finger across his throat.

“What—?” Simeot stopped, and tried to turn around. “All of them?”

The sight of the field was not something Simeot wanted to survey for long. There was a pile of corpses where the lines had met, such that the ground was entirely invisible. The bodies were less mangled nearer the trees, less trampled, less muddied. The scatter of dead men thinned out where they men had broken and run, but the grasses shone red. The white-and-blue tabards of the duke’s men were easy to spot: there were only three of them.

There were already looters, too. The wretched souls from whatever hamlet lay nearby. A few of the count’s men were there to chase them off, but between the looters and the vultures, they could not chase away them all.

“You’ve already…?”

Sourdy nodded. The boy stepped again. We can help this one, he seemed to say.

And so they did.

They dragged the man back to camp and laid him beside the company’s one supply wagon, for it gave some shade. Simeot did not have hopes for the man. The gash under his collarbone was not his only wound. A cut to his ear had bled very badly, and the man’s legs were shattered. One bent the wrong way, the other seemed to be entirely soft beneath the knee, where blood had soaked every inch of Farild’s trouser-leg and boot.

Once they found water, Simeot bathed his own throat first but then they cleaned the captain’s head.

Farild woke to the astonishment of his caretakers. Greater yet: he seemed immediately lucid.

“Simeot,” he moaned. “Are we alive?”

“We are. You are not well. Lie back.”

“Is the work done? Is it over? What news?”

Simeot told him what he understood: the battle was over. The Guiffardings won. And if any others of the company are alive, they are not here.

“Go to Count Guarin,” breathed Farild. “Get the payment. Now, man.”

“Captain, you are not well. Did you hear me? Everyone else is dead.”

“All the more reason!” Farild spat. “He still owes me money. Did we not earn it? Go and collect, Simeot, or else I’ll gut you.”

“Irner is dead, Captain. And Jovin, and Arnand.”

“Who’s Arnand?”

Simeot stared open faced at the man.

“Go now, Simeot. Get the payment. Three hundred silvrates. That was the agreement. He has it now, with him. We must collect the contract, and get away before they try to stiff us. I’ll give you a hundred just to yourself. We must go. Go!”

✹ ✹ ✹

Count Guarin of Guiffard looked askance at the ragged man who had interrupted his conference. The soldier, wholly unwashed from battle, stood lopsided near the opening of the count’s tent, staring in slack-jawed impudence.

He had heard the man’s request and chose to ignore it for the moment.

“Do you know this man, Constable?” the count asked loud enough for everyone in the tent to hear.

“I do not, my lord,” replied the constable.

“Is he even a Maretonian?”

“Looks foreign to me, sir.”

“Tell me, man,” Guarin addressed the grimy messenger. “Why are you bald? You surely are not that old?”

“I am samyuzot. It is my way,” came the response, “and the way of my people.” At a nudge from a bodyguard, he added, “Sir.”

“I think him a plainsman,” said the constable. “One of their criminals, wandering about. I’ve heard of this.”

“Words Above, a heathen?” sneered the count. The lord took a draft of wine from his wooden cup. He waited a few moments, as if thinking, but in truth he had known his decision long before this apparition had imposed itself. He spoke to the ghastly intruder: “The answer is no. You are unknown to me. I made a deal with one Captain Farild, and none other. I do not see him here, nor any of his men.”

“I am one of his men!”

“There are no heathens in my army.”

“But Farild is alive! He—lord, sir, my lord, please—He is alive, my lord. I can bring you to him.”

Guarin had a troubled look on his face now. He spoke to his constable: “Go and see.”

✹ ✹ ✹

The pain in Simeot’s hips and legs was beginning to subside, but the ache around his skull was only intensifying. Twice he stumbled while leading the county constable back to his part of the camp. He felt as if he were swimming.

“He’s over here,” said Simeot as they neared the site.

As soon as he rounded the corner of the supply wagon, Simeot knew Farild was dead. Sourdy stood there helpless. The scout and the constable walked up and saw the man entirely unmoving. His eyes were fixed, unseeing. If the captain’s face had been white before, now it was ghostly, as if he’d left this world hours and hours before.

“Is this the man?” asked the constable.

“It was.”

Sourdy shuffled his feet in an otherwise quiet moment.

The constable looked at the sorrowful man who stood beside him. He saw scars and the baldness, a sign of his punishment, or so the constable understood. Whatever this man’s lot had been, thought the constable, the Words of Heaven had not been kind. He thought of his own lord. Though he would serve him, duty-bound, to the death, the constable knew the injustice of what was occurring.

“Was he a friend?” he asked.

“No,” said Simeot. Then, only after a long moment: “But we fought together. Many times.”

The constable took this in. He crouched down beside the body and closed its eyes. When he stood back up, the two men stood eye to eye. Two warriors of indeterminate age, both tired, both defeated in their own way even on this day of victory. They stared in silence at one another. Neither gaze had any fight in it.

“I will send the Oldspeakers here to your captain,” said the constable, “and they will give him the rites. I will do the same for your comrades tomorrow. You have my Word.”

“They would want that, I suppose. What of payment?”

“My lord will not pay you—that you must understand, no matter your protests. Even if I were to vouch for you. It would not go well for you. If you resist my lord, then know that he will not deal gently with you. Nor, by duty, would I. However,” the constable cast a glance at the squalid camp the mercenaries kept, “you can take anything you can bring with you. It is little, I know. But take what you can. I’ll make sure you’re undisturbed. But pack your things, then go. Be gone before dark, and let not my lord see you.”

✹ ✹ ✹

When dusk fell, there was a wagon at the top of the gentle rise, between the trees and the splayed out corpses of Farild’s company. Six horses were fastened to it: two draft horses yoked in the front, a red stallion on a lead, and three packhorses in train behind.

The wagon itself held ordinary things: clothes, several small chests, water skins, a sack of ground wheat, a few bedrolls. But under the bedrolls and the layer of dirty clothing lay a more grisly haul: shirts of chainmail, swords and knives, helmets, belts, boots. Much of the mail was damaged. Most of the clothes would smell foul by morning and would need deep cleaning. Many of the blades were unwashed from their all-too-recent use. And there were purses. More than a score purses of varying sizes and values. Their accounting would have to wait.

This, the inheritance that fell to the last of the Hundred.

Simeot hauled himself into the bench. He looked out over the horses’ ears at the landscape beyond. Where to? He could think of no answer.

There was a sniff beside him and he turned to see Sourdy’s wide-eyed face. There were tear-streaks down the boy’s cheeks, but Simeot did not remember seeing him cry. The mute had helped him count the dead. Helped him strip some of the bodies. Helped him pack the wagon. It had been hard work.

As promised, Simeot handed over the largest of the purses they had found. Sourdy took it and held it against his chest.

A hand reached out to the boy, to help him up into the bench.

The boy shook his head. He looked into the trees. To his own people.

The hand retracted. A jaw stiffened. Reins snapped. Wheels began to squeal. And the samyuzot rode away.

In the morning he stared up into the sky from where he had slept without shelter or blanket on the open grass of this land which still felt foreign.

He wept for a long time. He wept among the dingy trappings of dead men. Alone.

✹ ✹ ✹

Thank you for reading. Want more of The Samyuzot? 

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