The Barrowland

For Corbie the unravelling came quickly now. When he kept his mind on business. But more and more he became distracted by that old silk map. Those strange old names. In TelleKurre they had a ring absent in modern tongues. Soulcatcher. Stormbringer. Moonbiter. The Hanged Man. They seemed so much more potent in the old tongue.

But they were dead. The only great ones left were the Lady and the monster who started it all, out there under the earth.

Often he went to a small window and stared toward the Barrowland. The devil in the earth. Calling, perhaps. Surrounded by lesser champions, few of them recalled in the legends and few the old wizard identified. Bomanz had been interested only in the Lady.

So many fetishes. And a dragon. And fallen champions of the White Rose, their shades set to eternal guard duty. It seemed so much more dramatic than the struggle today.

Corbie laughed. The past was always more interesting than the present. For those who lived through the first great struggle it must have seemed deadly slow, too. Only in the final battle were the legends and legacies created. A few days out of decades.

He worked less now, now that he had a sound place to live and a little saved. He spent more time wandering, especially by night.

Case came calling one morning, before Corbie was fully wakened. He allowed the youth inside. “Tea?”

“All right.”

“You’re nervous. What is it?”

“Colonel Sweet wants you.”

“Chess again? Or work?”

“Neither. He’s worried about your wandering around at night. I told him I go with you and all you do is look at the stars and stuff. Guess he’s getting paranoid.”

Corbie smiled a smile he did not feel. “Just doing his job. Guess my life looks odd. Getting past it. Lost in my own mind. Do I act senile sometimes? Here. Sugar?”

“Please.” Sugar was a treat. The Guard could not provide it.

“Any rush? I haven’t eaten.”

“He didn’t put it that way.”

“Good.” More time to prepare. Fool. He should have guessed his walks would attract attention. The Guard was paranoid by design.

Corbie prepared oats and bacon, which he shared with Case. For all they were well paid, the Guard ate poorly. Because of ongoing foul weather the Oar road was all but impassable. The army quartermasters strove valiantly but often could not get through.

“Well, let’s see the man,” Corbie said. And: “That’s the last bacon. The Colonel better think about farming here, just in case.”

“They talked about it.” Corbie had befriended Case partly because he served at headquarters. Colonel Sweet would play chess and talk old times, but he never revealed any plans.

“And?”

“Not enough land. Not enough fodder.”

“Pigs. They get fat on acorns.”

“Need herdsmen. Else the tribemen would get them.”

“I guess so.”

The Colonel ushered Corbie into his private quarters. Corbie joked, “Don’t you ever work? Sir?”

“The operation runs itself. Been rolling four centuries, that’s the way it goes. I have a problem, Corbie.”

Corbie grimaced. “Sir?”

“Appearances, Corbie. This is a world that lives by perceptions. You aren’t presenting a proper appearance.”

“Sir?”

“We had a visitor last month. From Charm.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Neither did anyone else. Except me. What you might call a prolonged surprise inspection. They happen occasionally.” Sweet settled behind his work-table, pushed aside the chess set over which they had contested so often. He drew a long sheet of southern paper from a cubby at his right knee. Corbie glimpsed printing in a crabbed hand.

“Taken? Sir?”

Corbie never sirred anyone except as an afterthought. The habit disturbed Sweet. “Yes. With the Lady’s carte blanche. He did not abuse it. But he did make recommendations. And he did mention people whose behavior he found unacceptable. Your name was first on the list. What the hell are you doing, wandering around all night?”

“Thinking. I can’t sleep. The war did something. The things I saw. … The guerrillas. You don’t want to go to sleep because they might attack. If you do sleep, you dream about the blood. Homes and fields burning. Animals and children screaming. That was the worst. The babies crying. I still hear the babies crying.” He exaggerated very little. Each time he went to bed he had to get past the crying of babes.

He told most of the truth and wound it into an imaginative lie. Babies crying. The babies who haunted him were his own, innocents abandoned in a moment of fear of commitment.

“I know,” Sweet replied. “I know. At Rust they killed their children rather than let us capture them. The hardest men in the regiment wept when they saw the mothers hurling their infants down from the walls, then jumping after them. I never married. I have no children. But I know what you mean. Did you have any?”

“A son,” Corbie said, in a voice both soft and strained, from a body almost shaking with pain. “And a daughter. Twins, they were. Long ago and far away.”

“And what became of them?”

“I don’t know. I would hope they’re living still. They would be about Case’s age.”

Sweet raised an eyebrow but let the remark slide past. “And their mother?”

Corbie’s eyes became iron. Hot iron, like a brand. “Dead.”

“I’m sorry”.

Corbie did not respond. His expression suggested he was not sorry himself.

“You understand what I’m saying, Corbie?” Sweet asked. “You were noticed by one of the Taken. That’s never healthy.”

“I get the message. Which was it?”

“I can’t say. Which of the Taken are where when could be of interest to the Rebel.”

Corbie snorted. “What Rebel? We wiped them out at Charm.”

“Perhaps. But there is that White Rose.”

“I thought they were going to get her?”

“Yeah. The stories you hear. Going to have her in chains before the month is out. Been saying that since first we heard of her. She’s light on her feet. Maybe light enough,” Sweet’s smile faded. “At least I won’t be around next time the comet comes. Brandy?”

“Yes.”

“Chess? Or do you have a job?”

“Not right away. I’ll go you one game.”

Halfway through, Sweet said, “Remember what I said. Eh? The Taken claimed he was leaving. But there’s no guarantee. Could be behind a bush someplace watching.”

“I’ll pay more attention to what I’m doing.”

He would. The last thing he wanted was a Taken interested in him. He had come too far to waste himself now.