He felt every current and at times seemed but moments from drowning, swept under into something animal, something base. Such a fate, when he considered it, amounted to little or no loss. All that he had known, all that he had come from, now seemed small, banal. The sky was vast overhead, the plain unending, and in moving beneath, in crossing it, they made bold their desires. This motion he felt, day after day, seemed to him far grander than any raised keep, any ruined house. He remembered playing in a heap of sand behind the workhouse, when he was much younger. It had been brought in for the potter who was visiting on her rounds. Something to do with grit in the clay, and moulds for firing and shaping. The sand had felt soft, sun-warmed on the surface but cool underneath, and he recalled lying sprawled across it, reaching out with one hand, watching his fingers sink deep, and then dragging handfuls close, as if to bury himself.
Travelling across this world felt much the same, as if by movement alone all could be taken hold of, taken in grasp, and thereby claimed as one’s own.
Musing on this, as he watched Feren building the fire for the night’s meal, Arathan thought he found an understanding of the nature of war; one that might impress even Sagander. When more than one hand reached out; when there was challenge over what was claimed: then would blood spill. There was nothing rational in it. The sand slipped through the fingers, sifted down and away from the hands that would hold it, and it remained long after the claimant had left. Nothing rational. Just desire, raw as a body’s release in the night.
‘Arathan.’
He looked up. ‘Sergeant Raskan.’
‘The light fast fades. Come with me.’
Arathan straightened. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Back up the trail.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is my wish.’
Bemused, Arathan followed the man. Raskan walked as if in a hurry to leave the camp. He had removed his worn-out boots and now wore the moccasins Draconus had given him — but so precious were they in Raskan’s eyes that he had taken to wearing them only at day’s end. Arathan could not be certain that this was the reason, but he suspected that it was. A gift from his lord. There was value in that. It made Raskan seem younger than he was, but nowhere near so young as Arathan felt when in the sergeant’s company.
The track bore signs of their horses’ passage. Torn grasses, hoofprints stamped deep, a ragged line that did not seem to belong on this open, rolling landscape.
‘Did you drop something on the trail, sergeant? What are we looking for?’
Raskan halted, glanced back at the camp, but all that was visible was the red and orange glow from the fire. The smell of its smoke reached them, thin and devoid of any heat. ‘Your father wanted you to learn the ways of the flesh. To lie with a woman. He judged the Bordersword useful in that, without having to worry about anything… political.’
Arathan looked down at the ground, unable to meet Raskan’s dark eyes. He brought a finger to his mouth to chew on the nail, and tasted the past night’s lovemaking. He quickly pulled it away.
‘But the feelings that can build, between a man and a woman… well, these things can’t be predicted.’ The sergeant shifted about, muttered a moment under his breath, and then continued, ‘You’ll not marry her. You’ll not spend the rest of your life with her. She’s twice your age, with twice your needs.’
Arathan looked off into the darkness, wanting to run there, lose himself. Let Raskan utter his cruel words to empty shadows.
‘Are you understanding me?’
‘There should have been more women with us,’ Arathan said. ‘So you could’ve had one, too.’
‘Like a hole in the ground? There’s more to it than that. There’s more to them than that. It’s what I’m getting at. She ain’t a whore so she don’t think like a whore. What do you think coin pays, when it goes between a man and a woman? It pays for no hard feelings, that’s what it pays for. Your father thought it would serve you. A few nights. Enough to make you familiar with the whole thing. He didn’t want you to take on a woman, half lover, half mother.’
Arathan trembled, wanting to strike the man, wanting to draw his sword and cut him to pieces. ‘You don’t know what he wanted,’ he said.
‘I do. He sent me to you — he knows what we’re talking about right now. And there’s more than that — he’s taken Feren off, too. He’s telling it to her as plain as I am to you. It’s gotten too much, too important-’
‘What’s wrong with that?’