The Summer of the Swordsman

Chapter XXV

Kenui called for me once more, just before midnight. Mourner was still asleep, and Lendis brought me the news. Even his round, cheerful face seemed gray and weary in the starlight. I put a hand to Lendis' shoulder. "He's dying, then?" I asked. "Did Captain Quinquius tell you?"

Lendis nodded. He seemed close to tears in the brighter light from the oil lamps. I halted him and gripped his shoulders. "Death comes to all of us," I said. "Anyone who's soldiered more than five years learns that. Give yourself time, and don't grieve for Kenui. Sometimes death is a boon."

Lendis nodded sadly and stood aside as I stepped away from the helm. "But he was good to me," he said.

"Then you're one of the lucky few," I said with an attempt at a grin, and went below.

** ** **

Death isn't the way they depict it in the romances‑‑a brave smile at the end, a soft sigh and eyes gently closing. And then a smooth sheet drawn over the calm, peaceful features. Kenui had just died. His eyes were open and sightless, still black but with the sparkle gone from them. His mouth hung slightly open. As I watched, Quinquius closed the mouth and the staring eyes.

"At least he went easily at the last," I said.

Quinquius looked up at me.  "As easily as you can expect with a festering stomach wound," he said, and his voice had a curiously flat quality to it.

I looked down at Kenui. He seemed so small, shrunken in on himself, as though his bantam spirit had crushed the body in struggling free, leaving a collapsed shell behind.

My vision seemed to shift, to fade. I still saw Kenui's body before me like an empty husk, I could still hear the creak and sigh of the ship's timbers stretching and twisting with the motion of the waves, but beyond them I could hear the cheers of a crowd and see the flash and glint of sunlight upon an upraised sword. Light scattered in an arc as the bright sword whipped through a dark green melon set atop a pole. And then the melon falling, falling, its deep gold heart against the brick‑colored dust of Trentum.

Hooves halted, sunlight following the sword upward as it described a salute, lingering, leaping from the sword to a cap of heavy black hair and, beneath that, slanted, sparkling black eyes. Kenui, Marshal of Sen‑Chiun.

The name was shouted by the crowd, and a tangled and tragic story told to me by one of the bystanders. I listened as the horse reared, watched the rider control the horse, laughing, bowing. Magnificently, tragically drunk. I shouted the name, and he cantered over to me, I watching him come, seeing the thick hair scattered by the wind, the stubby, strong hands on the reins and about the sword. Kenui of Sen‑Chiun, agreeing to join my troop of mercenaries...

The sights and sounds dwindled, became fixed, and then faded and I was inside that cabin beside the stiffening corpse of a friend. I looked down once more at Kenui, said something kind to Quinquius, and turned to leave. Quinquius would need to be alone.

Truth and reality aren't necessarily one and the same. This world is full of lies and half‑truths that will vanish in the end. What will we think of our sophistication then, of the millions of cruelties we perform in the name of expediency and fashion? And how will we regard the truth when it stands at last, terrible and splendid, among us, blinding us?

I took the wheel from Lendis and sent him to bed. He was young, after all, and this time had been a terrible trial for him. I had lived through other deaths and other defeats, and I was tougher. But he was a good boy, I thought, looking up at the stars.

And then for a moment I heard the crowd again, shouting Kenui's name, saw him bowing, his face alight with drink and laughter. A flawed treasure, Kenui, but a treasure nonetheless. I still see him that way. How can you mourn one smiling and happy in the dust and the throngs of Trentum?

I turned my face into the wind and caught the sparkle of lights at the edge of my vision, stretching out to the west. Timras at last.

I bade a quiet farewell to Kenui and the old times and turned the ship full toward Timras and a safe harbor.