Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy 2)

“Hey, big man, don’t you know we’ve all felt it? That’s what the ‘end of the road’ means here. Sheer shit-your-pants terror. Hey, don’t feel bad, trooper. It gets done to all of us. Initiation, you might say. And now you’re one of us. Gettys-sweated. That’s what we call it. You got a proper Gettys sweat worked up.”

A roar of laughter went up as he approached me and offered me his own canteen. I reached down, drank from it, and as I handed it back, I managed a completely insincere smile and a weak laugh. “It happens to everyone that way?” I managed to ask. “The terror?”

“Oh, yeah, that it do. Count yourself a tough nut. There’s no piss running into your boot. Most of us here can’t brag about that.” The fellow slapped me companionably on the leg, and strange to say, I felt better.

“Does the king know about this?” I blurted out, and then felt a fool when my words woke another general laugh.

“If it hadn’t happened to you, would you have believed it?” drawled the fellow who had befriended me.

I shook my head slowly. “No. Like as not, I wouldn’t.” I paused, then asked, “What is it?”

“Nobody believes it until it happens to him,” he agreed with me. “And nobody can say exactly what it is. Only that it happens. And that we can’t think of a way to get past it.”

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“Does the king know about this?” I blurted out, and then felt a fool when my words woke another general laugh.

“If it hadn’t happened to you, would you have believed it?” drawled the fellow who had befriended me.

I shook my head slowly. “No. Like as not, I wouldn’t.” I paused, then asked, “What is it?”

“Nobody believes it until it happens to him,” he agreed with me. “And nobody can say exactly what it is. Only that it happens. And that we can’t think of a way to get past it.”

“Can’t we go around it?”

He smiled tolerantly, and I almost blushed. Of course not. If they could have, they would have. He gave me a nod and a smile. “Go on back to Gettys. If you go into Rollo’s Tavern and tell them that a Gettys sweat requires a Gettys beer to quench it, he’ll give you a free one. It’s a tradition for new recruits, but I think they’ll extend it to you.”

“I am a new recruit,” I told him. “Colonel Haren just signed me on. Loosely attached me, that is. I’m the new cemetery guard.”

He looked up at me, and the smile faded from his face. Around him, the other men were exchanging glances. “You poor bastard,” he said with feeling. And then they opened their ranks and motioned me to ride back to Gettys.

The notion of a free beer at a friendly tavern was a powerful draw. I considered it carefully as I rode back toward Gettys. I still couldn’t decide if I felt insulted or hurt by the prank that had been played on me, or relieved that they’d all seen fit to initiate me. In the end, I decided that Hitch’s remark had been the most accurate one. It had been very educational. And I was in no position to resent it, I reminded myself. I wasn’t a junior officer and the son of a battle lord. I was a new recruit, at the very bottom of the social order. I should probably have thanked my stars that my initiation was no rougher than it had been.

Now that I was well away from the end of the road, I could ponder what had overcome me. I didn’t want to try to remember that fear too clearly, nor to dwell on it. A comforting thought came to me suddenly. It wasn’t really my problem. I wasn’t building the road. All I had to do, simple soldier that I was, was guard the cemetery. I heaved a sign of relief at that thought and rode on.

But when I reached the sign that pointed the way to the cemetery, I decided that my visit to the tavern could wait for tomorrow. Evening was coming on, and I wanted to see what my new billet looked like.

A cart track wound up the hillside. Clove and I followed it. I soon reached the first rows of rough headboards, for such they were, grave markers made of wood, not stone. To come on such a sprawling cemetery so far from any domiciles, was a very strange sensation. The graveyard was in an open meadow on a gentle roll of hilltop. Tall grass surrounded it, and the inevitable tree stumps. After the immense trees I had seen that afternoon, these seemed quite small and ordinary. I reined in Clove and sat on his back, enjoying that vantage of height. The only sound was the sweep of wind across the grasses, and the calls of the birds in the nearby forest. The cemetery told its own sad tale. There was a row of individual markers, and then what I could only describe as a filled-in trench. The hummock of earth over it showed that the dead had not been buried deeply. Beyond it, the individual graves resumed, but soon enough, those tidy rows were again interrupted by a long hummock of grass-grown earth. The farther I went, the newer the grave markers became.

It was an efficient cemetery, without thought for sentiment or beauty. The grass growing in it had been scythed, but not recently. There were no plantings, no walkways wandering among the graves, and not even a fence to indicate the boundaries of it. I rode Clove along a narrow track through the graves until I reached my destination: three wooden structures on the far eastern edge of the graveyard. As I approached the buildings, I found them better constructed than I had dared hope. They were tidy and tight, built of squared-off logs and well-caulked with clay. Grass had crept into the walkway along with weeds. It had been weeks, at least, since anyone had trodden them on a regular basis.

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