In time, he stood before the man at the table, a mean-eyed colonel with black hair and sallow, pockmarked skin.

  “Name?” asked the man curtly.

  Oddly, Vinas had not until that moment expected to need an alias. “Tobe,” he ventured. He winced and shifted from foot to foot. “That’s what my friends call me. Tobe. I s’pose you could put down Tobias, though – spelt with a I-A-S. No surname.”

  “Where was it, Tobias with an I-A-S, that you learned how to read?” the colonel asked, his hawklike eyes rising from the volume.

  “Oh,” Vinas said, flushing, “I never did. Only my master had two Tobe’s, but only one Tobe with an I-A-S. That’s what he called us. Just plain Tobe and then Tobe with an I-A-S.”

  The colonel’s stare was piercing. “You have run off from your master, then? Are you an indentured servant or slave?”

  “We didn’t run off,” broke in Luccia. “We earned out our time. We got free, the legal way. But then we find out ‘free’ means you don’t eat.”

  The colonel laughed a little. “You must be —”

  “Tobe, yes, without a I-A-S,” she said, and then bowed with tramp-like decorum. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  The colonel nodded, and wrote again. “I don’t believe you. Why is it that you, Tobe without an I-A-S have callused hands while your friend, Tobe with an I-A-S has soft, white hands?”

  Vinas spouted, “I did silversmithing – detail work. Tobe, here, did ironmongery – heavy pounding and such.”

  The soldier looked skeptical. “Do you know what happens to colonels who enlist noble brats among the peasant division?”

  “We aren’t nobles,” Luccia insisted.

  “Good,” said the colonel. “It would go very bad for you if you were.” His look was inscrutable, his eyes black. “I have a test for you, one that will measure balance, courage, and ingenuity.” He gestured across the proving grounds to a great, rough-barked tree, stripped of branches and leaning up against a stout, short wall. Many other recruits scampered or crawled up the sloped tree trunk. Few reached the other end, a hundred feet along the bole and thirty feet in the air. At one point or another, most of the recruits slipped off.

  Vinas’s eyes narrowed. With a natural charm that bordered on arrogance, he said, “It looks easy enough to me.”

  The colonel returned the look. “I thought that might be your opinion. That is why you’ll be climbing that one.” His nod directed Vinas’s gaze to another hundred-foot-long trunk. It was equally broad and stripped of bark. But, instead of leaning at a climbable angle, this log stood straight up. Its base had been rammed down into a dry well, and ninety feet of it jutted into the air. The ground around the bole was hard, mortared stone.

  “That?” asked Luccia, her voice unexpectedly shrill. She coughed. “You want us to climb that?”

  “If you want to join the imperial divisions, you will climb it,” the man replied flatly.

  Sinews along Vinas’s jaw tightened. He smiled, slowly and humorlessly. The gray day glinted from his teeth. “We will climb it,” he growled. He turned and strode toward the log.

  Luccia followed. Usually when Vinas made headstrong decisions for them both, Luccia took immediate and loud objection. Not today. She walked behind him, hands at her sides instead of poised defiantly on her hips, silent... at least until she caught up to him.

  “What are you doing? We can’t climb that thing.”

  He did not look at her, his eyes fixed on the splinter-filled bole ahead. “We can, and we will.”

  “Let’s give it up this time,” she advised. “We’ll come back in a year and see if they take us.”

  He stripped off his tunic, revealing the tight-muscled pale chest of a young noble. He was strong and wiry, yes, but with the clean beauty of an athlete, not a worker. Now, everyone would know he was noble. A small crowd of soldiers and recruits turned to trail them.

  Vinas ignored the gawkers. He twisted his tunic into a long, strong coil of fabric. “Take yours off, too, Luce. We’re going to need two of these.”

  Her face flushed. “What are you talking about? I can’t take off —”

  “Well, at least that belt,” Vinas interrupted impatiently. He undid his own belt and pulled the coarse rope from his waist. Luccia followed suit. Vinas tied the two belts together and seemed pleased.

  They reached the tree trunk. It was more daunting up close. Ninety feet into the air... The trunk was fat, its bark sheared off. The slick white quick beneath was frayed into wicked, dagger sized splinters that jutted upward.

  “Get on the other side,” Vinas instructed calmly.

  Luccia sought some softness in his eyes, but none remained. His pride had taken over. When Vinas’s pride was bruised, he would do anything – no matter how absurd or deadly – to soothe it. That was half the problem. The other half was that Luccia could not dissuade him.

  She circled the trunk and looked dubiously up the tree. “There’s a thousand better ways to die than by doing this, you know.”

  He nodded curtly. His eyes held a mild apology. “But there’s only one way we’ll get into the infantry.” He flipped the end of his twisted tunic toward her, and she caught it. Then, on the opposite side of the bole, he tossed her the end of the belt rope. “We hold each other up, right? We hold onto these ropes and lean our weight against them. If one of us loses our grip, we both fall.”

  “I know, I know.”

  He kicked off his shoes. “And our footholds are just as important. We lean back and dig our feet in. If one foot slips, we both go down.”

  Her face darkened. “Yes. Let’s just climb.”

  Vinas set his jaw, positioned one foot on a jagged lump on his side of the trunk, and leaned his weight back against the ropes. On the other side, Luccia did likewise. He couldn’t see her face, or the footholds she gained, but he felt her weight answer his along the lengths of cloth and hemp.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, we ascend.”

  She did not answer in words, only jiggling the ropes. They crept upward along the rough flank of wood. Unblinking, unbreathing, Vinas set his bare foot on a higher nub and eased his weight onto it. There came a pause.

  “Luce,” Vinas ventured through long, deep breaths. “You know I wouldn’t trust another soul to counterbalance me.”

  Her serious whisper came to him like a confession, “Yes. I know.”

  She climbed again. His body answered the movement of hers. They rose above the spectators below.

  Their audience muttered dubiously. Hushed jokes and not-so-hushed laughter wafted up. The watchers stood at a safe distance. Arms were crossed. Mouths were wry. Eyes squinted skeptically against the gray day. If it came to it, these soldiers and recruits would stand by as Vinas and Luccia dropped to the ground, legs broken.

  Vinas asked, “How are your arms?”

  “They’re starting to hurt,” Luccia replied quietly. “You’re pretty heavy.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. You want to head back down?”

  She answered by further ascent. He laughed again, and responded in kind.

  Now when they spoke to each other, their voices were strained and their words came out in quick gasps. Vinas said, “It’s shorter to... the top... than to the bottom.”

  “But faster... to the bottom,” Luccia added as she climbed.

  Vinas matched her pace. Blood made their footing more treacherous. The minute splinters and rough shoulders of wood bled the soles of his feet. At first, the red stuff glued his arch to the wood, but now there was enough to make his feet slowly slide off. He could no longer rest. Every two steps gained would mean half a step lost.

  Surely it was the same for Luccia, on the other side of the trunk. Surely – but still she rose.

  High above the crowd. When Vinas looked down, sweat and dizziness filled his eyes. He blinked and tilted his head back. Perhaps twenty feet more, and they would reach the top.

  The trunk thinned. Vinas soon could see Luccia’s arms, down to elbows dripping with sweat. Then he caught sight of her sleeves, rolled about her upper arms, then her shoulders. They had almost reached the top.

  “Only a few... steps more,” Vinas gasped. His voice was fully of giddy realization.

  They seemed to have climbed to the very clouds. Gray-white light streamed in festive pinions about them, welcoming them to the narrow top of the tree. At last, Vinas saw her face. The mud smeared across her freckled cheek was black, running with sweat down her neck. Her skin was mottled with exertion. But her eyes were joyous and triumphant.

  One struggling step more, and their eyes met above the shorn top. They hunkered down on either side of the tree and breathed and laughed.

  “We did it,” gushed Vinas. “He’s got to let us in now.”

  Despite the happy flutter of her eyes, she spoke gloomily, “He’s not had his pound of flesh yet.”

  Vinas’s expression grew suddenly gray. The smile left his mouth. “Luce, I’m going to slowly pull you around to my side. Keep hold of the rope and the tunic. I want you to climb around to me until you can grab my hand.”

  “What is it?” Luccia asked. Then she saw. The midpoint of the tunic had frayed nearly through. Only a thin seam of one sleeve held them in place.

  “We’ll never make it down the way we came up.” Vinas explained. “If you inch around and we hold hands, we can work our way down one at a time, slipping the rope as we go.

  “But the rope will catch on the splinters and fray, won’t it?” Luccia noted.

  “Come around,” Vinas replied calmly. “Well just have to try.”

  Her chin trembled briefly, but her eyes were hard. “Start pulling me around. I’ll move toward you.”

  He nodded, rolling the torn shirt around his fist. She edged around the tree. Her bare feet trembled as her toes sought purchase on the rough-skinned wood. With each sidelong step, the circle that held them aloft tightened. Vinas eyed the shirt, its seam visibly frayed. He looped the cloth around his fist.

  Excruciating moments later, Luccia’s fingers touched his. She caught his hand and picked her way around until she stood beside him. The rope looped from her other hand, around the tree, to his grasp.

  “Good,” Vinas breathed. “Now, hold my wrist while I get this shirt free.”

  She did. He spun his hand around until the shirt fell away. It drifted as it fell, as though it were a living thing, before collapsing lifelessly upon the ground.

  Flexing his numb fingers, Vinas clasped Luccia’s wrist. He could feel the hammering of her pulse.

  “Good. Now, slowly, step downward,” he said. They both looked down and saw the bloody trail leading up the trunk. Luccia’s feet were no better off than Vinas’s, rimmed as though she had been trodding red grapes.

  They stepped down. The rope drew tight. Once they both had found solid footholds, Vinas said, “We’re going to have to lean in and flip the rope away from the trunk. On three. One, two, three!”

  They leaned in toward the trunk. The rope that held them aloft went terrifyingly slack. They looped the rope outward, and it skidded down the trunk to take hold a few feet below. The climbers fell away from the stalk. The circle of rope and arms caught tight. Vinas and Luccia breathed in relief.

  So, they descended. Over and over again, they found footholds, flipped the rope free, and felt that fragile embrace again.

  All the while, the crowd below grew. Recruits abandoned the proving grounds. Colonels left their field tables. The bald-headed colonel’s object lesson had drawn the attention of the whole castle. He stood with the other gawkers, looking upward with a mixture of shame and hope on his face.

  The taut fatigue of holding to the rope and to each other began to take its toll. Vinas and Luccia were halfway down when the sweat made their hands begin to slip. They caught each other only by fingertips. The rope snagged itself twice more.

  Then, thirty feet up from the paving stones, they lost hold of each other. Still clutching the rope, Luccia fell away from the trunk. The belts reeled her out and around the tree. She fell toward the ground below, closing her eyes.

  The rope yanked tight. Her descent stopped. She looked down upon a mere twelve-foot drop and let go.

  Her feet struck the hard stones, and she rolled across them, getting no worse than bruises. The crowd parted before her, and she sprawled to a halt among them. A cheer formed in her throat but caught dead when she gazed up at what the crowd was watching.

  Vinas writhed above, hanging impaled upon a spear-length splinter of wood. His hand opened only now, letting the snake of rope fall to the stones.

  “Get a ladder!” someone shouted. “Get him down from there!”

  Meus Pater*

  *my father

  “Most lost sons show up in brothels or vomitoriums somewhere,” came a kindly voice. “You, on the other hand, always wind up in one infirmary or another.”

  Vinas opened his eyes and looked up, seeing the yellow-plastered and crack-riddled ceiling of the soldiers’ hostel. Then, in the midst of this diffuse firmament, a gray-haired head emerged, sunlike. Eyes at once intense and merciful looked out from sharp folds of flesh. A prominent nose overshadowed a mouth that quirked in a smile.

  “Hello, Father,” Vinas groaned. He tried to roll to one elbow, but the lancing fire that shot from his stomach to his right shoulder convinced him otherwise.

  So did the staying hand of Adrenas Solamnus. “Give yourself time to rest, to heal. You’re lucky that wound is shallow, or you’d be resting forever.”

  Vinas lay back on the cot. His hand gingerly traced the line of rumpled flesh. The shaft had slid in at his right hip, traveled beneath his stomach muscles, and sliced under his left pectoral. “It certainly doesn’t feel shallow.”

  Adrenas seemed to consider. “At least it feels, son. At least it feels.”

  Vinas gazed blankly at the ceiling. “I was planning on sending for you when I had the strength —”

  “I wasn’t willing to wait that long,” interrupted the noble. He straightened his silken robe of blue and white, the colors of House Solamnus. His hands were as patient and prim as any woman’s. “It’s been a month since your pole-climbing escapade.”

  “A month?” Vinas asked. “I just woke up last night.”

  “I know,” his father replied. “I’ve been visiting you for the last three weeks.” The man finished his fastidious straightening and settled an infinitely weary face in his hands. “What were you thinking, Son?”

  Vinas sighed. How many times had they had this discussion? “I’m sixteen, Father. If we were peasants, I’d have been a man for two years already. If we were plainsmen, I’d have been a man for four —”

  “We aren’t peasants or plainsmen, a fact you all too often forget,” Adrenas admonished him from within his cradled fingers. “Yes, a sixteen-year-old is adult enough to hold a beggar’s cup or pillage a town, but not to own and run an estate, not to survive a single audience before a corrupted senate, not to do any of the things a nobleman must do.”

  “I don’t want to do any of those things,” Vinas objected. “I want to fight. You had your years in the imperial army. You made our family what it is through the spoils of war. Why won’t you let me try the same?”

  “Times are different now, Son. I fought elves in Caergoth and in Qualinesti, not sixty leagues from here. Now the wars are beyond Vingaard Keep, beyond Dargaard even, two hundred leagues hence. And it’s not elves but ogres and witchlings and worse. Are there any spoils worth having from such wars?”

  “I need to rest,” Vinas said preemptively. “You said so yourself. Can’t this wait?”

  The man nodded. “Forgive me. Old habits die hard. What I’d really intended to tell you was that once you were healed completely – perhaps by your seventeenth birthday – you’ll be made a field colonel,”

  Vinas stared, astounded, at his father.

  Adrenas shrugged. “After this latest stunt, I decided you’d be getting into the army one way or another. I called in some old favors. If you must be in the army, at least you can be a commander instead of a follower.”

  Vinas blinked in amazement. “Thank you, Father. I’ll do you proud.”

  “I expect no less,” the man said, utterly serious.

  “Wait until Luccia hears,” Vinas said to himself.

  “About Luccia,” Adrenas said. “She marched out with the XXVI Daltigoth. Your ploy worked at least that far. But in Solanthus, she was discovered to be a mere girl, and was cast out of the army. That was three weeks ago. I do not know what has become of her. No doubt she’s running with the peasants there. Solanthus has become notorious for its bread troubles.”

  This time Vinas did sit up. “She’s where?”

  Adrenas’s staying touch was gentle. “Solanthus is little more than a road fortification with a few small villages nearby. She couldn’t have gone far. When you are well enough —”

  Vinas swung his legs down off the, cot. “I’m well enough now —” he began, before slumping into his father’s arms.

  II

  Two Years Hence, 13 Rannmont, 1186 Age of Light

  Near midnight, Vinas Solamnus reined in his warhorse at the top of the snowy rise. A biting wind cast his colonel’s cloak away from him. He signaled to his senior lieutenants to halt the company of foot soldiers behind. They did. Gaias Camillus, a grizzled veteran and Vinas’s trusted captain, rode up beside him.

  “There it is – Solanthus,” Vinas said. “Nothing but a stockaded fort beside a log bridge over a frozen river.” He spat. The spittle became ice before it struck ground. “If the so-called peasant rebels burned that bridge, it would take us a couple of hours to build a better one. Instead, the empire guards it with a unit of soldiers, who bum twice as much wood every day as it would take to build the bridge.”

  The old soldier might have frowned, though his expression was lost beneath a mask of ice-encrusted beard. “It is the empire’s way.”

  Vinas nodded grimly. Perhaps it was. The empire had, after all, denied Vinas enlistment among the foot soldiers, instead setting him – an inexperienced eighteen-year-old – at the head of a hundred career soldiers. Vinas had hoped for the appointment, true, and his father had requested it, but he blamed the empire for the folly of granting it.

 

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