meadow. He strained and heaved forward and the recalcitrant log followed him in jumps and starts.
Pausing to catch his breath, he said to Jorgen, ‘It seemed like a good idea back there.’
The boy laughed. ‘I told you we should have cut it up and carried the wood back to the house.’
Kaspar shook his head in disbelief. Being told off by a child; it was a concept so alien to him he found it amusing and irritating at the same time. He was used to people deferring to him automatically, to saying nothing critical in his presence. He leaned into the harness again and said, ‘If Tal Hawkins and his bunch could see me now, they’d be on the floor laughing.’
He glanced at Jorgen who was obviously amused, and found the boy’s mirth infectious. Kaspar began to chuckle as well. ‘Very well, you were right. Go back and fetch the axe and we’ll chop this thing up right here.’
Jorgen scampered off. Kaspar didn’t relish the idea of a dozen or more trips across the meadow, but without a horse his idea was just plain folly. He stretched as he turned to watch the boy run to where they had left the axe and the water bucket.
Kaspar had been at the farm for eight days now. What had started off as a fearful experience for the boy and his mother had begun to settle into a relatively calm situation. He still slept by the door, but he no longer gathered up potential weapons. He had chosen that spot to give Jojanna as much privacy as was possible in a one-room hut, and also for security reasons. Anyone attempting to come through the door would have to physically move Kaspar first.
Kaspar was still vague about the geography surrounding the farm, but he had no doubt that they were constantly plagued by dangers. Bandits and marauding bands of mercenaries were not uncommon in the area, but the farm was far enough removed from the old high road – the one Kaspar had stumbled along – that few travellers ever chanced across it.
Kaspar stretched again and relished the strength in his muscles. He knew he had lost weight during the three days without food and water, and now the constant exercise of farm-work was further reducing his bulk. A broad-shouldered man, the former Duke of Olasko had always carried his weight effortlessly, and he had indulged in food and wine of the highest quality. Now Kaspar had to wear the missing Bandamin’s clothing because his own trousers were starting to fit too loosely around the waist. He had let his neatly-trimmed beard grow, lacking a razor, mirror, or scissors. Every morning, before washing his face in the water-bucket, he caught a glimpse of his reflection and barely recognized himself – sunburned, his dark beard now filling in, and his face thinner. He had been here less than two weeks – what would he look like after a month? Kaspar didn’t want to think about it; he intended to learn as much as he could from these people and then leave, for his future was not farming, no matter what else fate might hold in store for him. Still, he wondered how Jojanna would fare once he left them.
Jorgen had tried to help Kaspar, but as he was only eight years old, he was often drawn away by boyish interests. His regular chores involved milking the cow who had lost her calf, feeding the chickens, inspecting fences, and other small tasks a small boy was competent enough to perform.
Jojanna had taken up as much of her husband’s work as she was capable of, but a lot of it was just not possible. While she was as hard a worker as Kaspar had ever met, even she couldn’t manage to be in two places at the same time. Still, he marvelled at how industrious she was; rising before dawn and retiring hours after the sun set, to ensure that the farm would be maintained just as her husband had left it.
Kaspar had hundreds of tenant-farmers on his estates, and had never once given thought to their toils, always taking their efforts for granted. Now he appreciated their lives to a significant degree. Jojanna and Jorgen lived very well in comparison to most Olaskon farmers, for they owned their land, a small herd and produced saleable crops; but when Kaspar compared their situation to his old way of life, he realized they lived in near-poverty. How much poorer were the farmers of his own nation?
His nation, he thought bitterly. His birthright had been taken from him and he would have it back or die in the attempt.
Jorgen returned with the axe and Kaspar set to chopping the tree into smaller sections.
After a while the boy said, ‘Why don’t you split it?’
‘What?’
Jorgen grinned. ‘I’ll show you.’ He ran back to the shed and returned with a wedge of metal. He stuck the narrow end of the wedge into a notch and held it. ‘Hit it with the back of the axe,’ he told Kaspar.
Kaspar glanced at the axe and saw that the heel was heavy and flat, almost a hammer. He reversed his hold on the handle and swung down, driving the wedge into the wood. Jorgen pulled his hand away with a laugh and shook his hand. ‘It always makes my fingers sting!’
Kaspar gave the wedge three powerful blows and then, with a satisfying cracking sound, the bole split down the middle. Muttering, he observed, ‘You learn something new every day, if you just stop to pay attention.’
The boy looked at him with a confused expression and said, ‘What?’
Kaspar realized he had spoken his native Olaskon, so he repeated it, as best he could, in the local language and the boy nodded.
Next, Kaspar set to breaking up the rest of the bole and then chopping the remaining split rails into firewood. He found the repetitive effort strangely relaxing.
Lately, he had been troubled by dreams, odd vignettes and strange feelings. Small glimpses of things barely remembered, but disturbing. The oddest aspect of these dreams were the details which had escaped his notice in real life. It was as if he was watching himself, seeing himself for the first time in various settings. The images would jump from a court dinner, with his sister sitting at his side, to a conversation with a prisoner in one of the dungeons under his citadel and then to a memory of something that happened when he was alone. What was most disturbing was how he felt when he awoke, it felt as if he had just relived those moments, but this time the emotions were not consistent with how he remembered them before the dream.
The third night he had one particularly vivid dream-memory; a conversation with Leso Varen in the magician’s private chambers. The room reeked of blood and human excrement, and of alien odours from things the magician insisted on mixing and burning in his work area. Kaspar remembered the conversation well, for it had been the first time Varen had suggested to him that he should consider removing those who stood between himself and the crown of Roldem. Kaspar also remembered how appealing he had found the idea.
But he had awoken from the dream retching from the memory of the stench in the room; at the time he had visited Varen, he had hardly been aware of it, the smell had not bothered him in the slightest. Yet this morning he had sat bolt-upright before the door of the hut, gasping for breath, and had almost disturbed Jorgen.
Kaspar encouraged Jorgen to speak about whatever was on his mind, as his constant prattle sensitized Kaspar to the local language. He was becoming quite conversant, but was also frustrated. For all their good qualities, Jorgen and Jojanna were simple farm people who knew almost nothing of the world in which they lived beyond their farm and the village a few days’ walk to the northwest. It was there they sold their cattle and grain, and from what Kaspar could discern, Bandamin had been considered well-to-do by local standards.
He had been told about the great desert to the northeast, commanded by a race called the Jeshandi, who were not like the nomads who tried to capture him. They were the Bentu, a people who had migrated from the south in Jojanna’s father’s time. Kaspar calculated that it must have been during the war which had ended with the defeat
