The Summer of the Swordsman

Chapter V

I thought no more of Praecas' outburst until that evening. I had no cause to complain. I had seen him routed and myself vindicated, and I hadn't even had to open my mouth. Supper had been merry, and Praecas would be leaving the next day. My cup was running over, and I had need of nothing else to make my happiness complete, or so I thought.

I was just getting comfortably settled with a pitcher of mulled wine and hazy thoughts of a warm, shared bed, although I had no idea what woman, if any, would share the bed. A knock sounded at the door and I shouted, "Come in!" and Mourner entered carrying two reed pens, some scraped parchment and a bottle of ink.

I eyed him without enthusiasm. "And what do you want?" I growled, frowning at his set expression.

"I want you to sit up, put that wine back in the pitcher where it belongs, and watch me trace these letters for you. I think the Roman alphabet would be the best for you to learn at your age: everyone uses it, it's phonetic‑‑"

"What?"

"Based on sounds and therefore easy to interpret," Mourner explained, setting the parchment on the table beside me and putting my tankard of wine before the fire. "Now pull your chair forward. You hold the pen like this‑‑" He set a slim length of reed in my fist, showed me how to hold the slit end down, and suddenly looked up at me. "You do want to learn this, don't you?" he asked. "Because if you don't mind having oafs like Praecas chaff you for the rest of your life about being illiterate, then we'll say nothing further."

But I wanted to learn. I had wanted to know how to write since I was a child watching the scribes in the marketplace at Latriae. All the jokes about notched sticks had touched me, and suddenly the feel of that reed in my hand was the most splendid sensation of my life.

Mourner read my expression. His cool gray eyes were suddenly smiling and warm. "Then," he said, "You form your letters like this..."

** ** **

I knew the alphabet, my name, and some of the easier words by the time we rode from Tinstafl. Mourner had given me fairly simple scrolls of poetry to puzzle over, and the sudden delight of reading words and thoughts and emotions big enough to fill the heart from a scrap of parchment barely large enough to fit in my hand was something I can-t describe even now. Once started I couldn't be stopped. I even began to write poetry, something I do even now.

I remember that journey as a thing of beauty, of clouds piled like castles, great mounds of them towering in a cobalt sky, of brisk, biting winds that swept the sky clear and turned the plains of Danskagge into oceans of grain and winnowed grass.

We left Tinstafl with the wind at our backs and the sun at our shoulders, and Quinquius said it only showed the gods' good will, because they were literally shoving us from the place.

I nodded and bent my attention to the makeshift pencil in my hand and the scrap of smooth, whitewashed wood before me. I was practicing my letters.