The Summer of the Swordsman

XXXV

Mourner's departure heralded the end of the 'good old days', as I call them. Quinquius resigned from the troop two months after he left, and returned to Rome, as Kenui had urged. Seven years of mercenary soldiering had taken their toll, and he decided to follow good advice and brave the Emperor's displeasure and go back where he could fight for a land to which he belonged.

The night before he left, Anakreon, Sored, Lendis, Setnakht, Quinquius and I shared a few bottles of wine and passed the evening between grief and hilarity. And so he left us. I learned, later, that Valerius forgave him and made him the Legate of the Victrian Guard. He has never written to us, nor we to him, but if he's still alive, then he's still holding the position.

Sored died two years after that. We were fighting in Hellas, and he stopped a spear during an ambush that nearly cost Archistratos the war. The spear had been meant for me, and he had known it. He died as I held him, and I wept like a child there with the fight raging around me.

That same summer Lendis, my young helmsman from Tinstafl, met and fell in love with a woman with black hair and skin like warm cream. We let him stay with her when we moved on.

We were given commission after commission, and our asking price rose to sixty gold sestrians per day. People were glad to pay it, and we saw plenty of action and plenty of wealth, but the old adventure was gone It had vanished with the old friends and, I think, with our old innocence, for we had been innocent then.

Three years later as we fought in Gansbach, in Belgica, under the command of King Kirien, a messenger came to us from Sen‑Chiun saying that they were searching for Kenui. The King of Sen‑Chiun wanted Kenui to return. All was forgiven and had been so for twelve years. They had been seeking him ever since the day of the ambush, and there had been no need at all for him to run away.

Well. What is and what might have been are often two different things. I stood under the stars that evening, facing the wind, and poured a libation for the repose of Kenui's spirit. For a moment I felt his restless soul in the touch of the wind.

As for Mourner, we never heard more of him. Anakreon could have gone to the Archivist for the Guild on any of the continents we journeyed to, but he did not. And yet I almost feel as though he never left us. As though, somehow, his hand is still over us and his mind still among us. I said something once to Anakreon about that and he told me not to be a fool.

King Theracritus is dying, or so we hear. Anakreon has been summoned to Thrason, and he'll go as soon as this coming battle is fought and the campaign completed. I think we'll lose and so does he, but a contract is a contract, even if it does lock us into a lost cause. He told me that I would be his chancellor if we survive the fighting.

** ** **

The dagger is broken now, although I keep the hilt. I dropped it during a battle with the Danskaggans, and a horse stepped on it. I lost the pen‑‑I think it was stolen. I kept it for years and wrote with it when I could. My poetry is very much improved, though I now know it isn't really very good.

So Mourner's gifts are gone, all but one. I look down at the writing that has unwound from my pen, and although the script has more character than beauty to it, at least it is writing that can be read and understood by others.  

Not a bad return for a tankard of ale given to a thirsty slave on a hot summer day.