Arathan wanted to call her back. He could hear his own tone echoing in his mind, the words sounding plaintive and thin as a child’s. A petulant child at that. But his suspicions had taken hold of him, and with them he had felt a deep, turgid humiliation, hot and suffocating. Did his father believe a woman’s attention was still required for his son? Was he to be mothered until his very last day in the man’s company?
‘ It may be that you will believe I do not want you.’ Such had been his words in the Chamber of Campaigns.
But you don’t. Instead, you pass me off on whomever you choose.
‘Student! To my side!’
Gathering the reins, Arathan nudged Hellar into a trot. The beast lumbered, her stride very different from Besra’s loping gait. Apart from Sagander, no one else remained in the clearing.
I would have liked her better without your meddling, Father. Not every woman should be made to be my mother. Why do you bother interfering in my life at all? Cast me away; I will welcome it. In the meantime, leave me alone.
‘She means you no good, Arathan. Are you listening to me? Ignore her. Turn your back on her.’
He frowned across at the tutor, wondering at the man’s vehemence.
‘They carry lice. Diseases.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I am your company on this journey, is that understood?’
‘How soon before we arrive at Abara Delack?’
‘Never. We’re going around.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Lord Draconus wills it. Now, enough of your questions! It is time for a lesson. Our subject shall be weakness and desire.’
By mid-afternoon they were riding through old logging camps, broad swaths of level ground fringed on all sides by uprooted, burnt stumps. They were still some leagues from Abara Delack, but all tracks that remained led towards that settlement. Here they were able to ride side by side and Sagander insisted that Arathan do so.
In a way it was something of a relief. He could see that Rint had been just ahead of Sagander when they’d been in single file, and the Bordersword could not help but have heard the tutor’s loud, harsh proclamations that passed for a lesson, though Arathan had made certain that his infrequent replies to the tutor’s questions were muted.
Once on the wider path Rint kicked his mount up alongside his sister’s and the two fell into quiet conversation.
‘Weakness,’ Sagander now said, his tone both exhausted and relentless, ‘is a disease of the spirit. Among the noblest of our people, it simply does not exist, and it is this innate health, this natural vibrancy, that justifies their station in life. The poor worker in the fields — he is weak and his miserable poverty is but a symptom of the disease. But this alone is insufficient to earn your sympathy, student. You must be made to understand that weakness begins outside the body, and it must be reached for, grasped and then taken inside. It is a choice.
‘In all society there exists a hierarchy and it is measured by strength of will. That and nothing else. In this manner, the observation of society reveals a natural form of justice. Those possessing power and wealth are superior in every way to those who serve them. Are you paying attention? I will not accept a wandering mind, Arathan.’
‘I am listening, sir.’
‘There are some — misguided philosophers and bitter agitators — who argue that social hierarchy is an unnatural imposition, and indeed, that it must be made fluid. This is wilful ignorance, because the truth is, mobility does exist. The disease of weakness can be purged from the self. Often, such transformative events occur in times of great stress, in battle and the like, but there are other paths available for those of us for whom soldiering is not in our nature. Principal among these, of course, is education and the rigours of enlightenment.
‘Discipline is the weapon against weakness, Arathan. See it as sword and armour both, capable at once of attack and defence. It stands in stalwart opposition to the forces of weakness, and the middle ground, upon which this battle is waged, is desire.
‘Each of us, in our lives, must fight that battle. Indeed, every struggle that you may perceive is but a facet of that one conflict. There are pure desires and there are impure desires. The pure desires give strength to discipline. The impure desires give strength to weakness. Have I made this plain and simple enough for you?’
‘Yes sir. May I ask a question?’
‘Very well.’
Arathan gestured to the wasteland surrounding them. ‘This forest was cut down because people desired the wood. To build, and for warmth. They appear to have been very disciplined, as not a single tree remains standing. This leaves me confused. Were their desires not pure? Were their needs not honest needs? And yet, if the entire forest is destroyed, do we not therefore see a strength revealed as a weakness?’
Sagander’s watery eyes fixed on Arathan, and then he shook his head. ‘You have not understood a word of what I have said. Strength is always strength and weakness is always weakness. No!’ His face twisted. ‘You think confused thoughts and then you voice them — and the confusion infects others. No more questions from you!’
‘Yes sir.’
‘With discipline comes certainty, an end to confusion.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘I don’t think you do, but I have done all that I could — who would dare claim otherwise? But you are drawn to impurity, and it grows like an illness in your spirit, Arathan. This is what comes of an improper union.’
‘My father’s weakness?’
The back of Sagander’s hand, when it cracked into Arathan’s face, was a thing of knotted bones hard as rock. His head snapped back and he almost pitched from his horse — there was hot blood filling his mouth — and then Hellar shifted beneath him, and a sudden surge of muscles jolted Arathan to the right. There followed a solid, loud impact, and a horse’s scream.
Sagander’s cry rang through the air, but it seemed far away. Stunned, Arathan lolled on the saddle, blood pouring down from his nose. As Hellar tensed beneath him once more, front hoofs stamping fiercely at the ground, making stones snap, Arathan tugged the reins taut, drawing in his mount’s head. The beast back-stepped once, and then settled, muscles trembling.
Arathan could hear riders coming back down the trail. He heard shouted questions but it seemed they were in another language. He spat out more blood, struggled to clear the blurriness from his eyes. It was hard to see, to make sense of things. Sagander was on the ground and so was the man’s horse — thrashing, and there was something wrong with its flank, just behind its shoulder. The ribs looked caved in, and the horse was coughing blood.
Rint was beside him, on foot, reaching up to help him down from Hellar. He saw Feren as well, her visage dark with fury.
Sagander was right. It’s hard to like me. Even when following a lord’s orders.
The tutor was still shrieking. One of his thighs was bent in half, Arathan saw as he was made to sit down on the dusty trail. There was a massive hoof imprint impressed down on to where the leg was broken, and blood was everywhere, leaking out to puddle under the crushed leg. Against the white dust it looked black as pitch. Arathan stared at it, even as Feren used a cloth to wipe the blood from his own face.
‘Rint saw,’ she said.
Saw what?
‘Hard enough to break your neck,’ she added, ‘that blow. So he said and Rint is not one to exaggerate.’
Behind him, he heard her brother’s affirming grunt. ‘That horse is finished,’ he then said. ‘Lord?’
‘End its misery,’ Draconus replied from somewhere, his tone even and cool. ‘Sergeant Raskan, attend to the tutor’s leg before he bleeds out.’
Galak and Ville were already with the tutor, and Galak looked up and said, distinctly — the first clear words Arathan heard — ‘It’s a bad break, Lord Draconus. We need to cut off the leg, and even then he might die of blood loss before we can cauterize the major vessels.’