Fourth

I was sixteen when it happened.

**

I first saw the hung bodies through the carriage window. We didn’t normally hang people in Cheliax, but rather drove them through pikes. It was a more gruesome, painful way of dying, getting slowly impaled as gravity pushed your innards into a metal pike, sometimes an inch wide, sometimes four. It suited those in power, those ordering the executions. It suited the Lord of Hells, so it was the Chelish way.

Von Rusdorf’s had never adopted the Chelish way of public executions. For us, it was always either death by the axe, like our Ulfen ancestors had done it, or by hanging. I had asked about it once, from Father, but he had said it was simple custom. A tradition, one of many in our noble family. Maybe my family preferred quick deaths.

In broad daylight, the traitors were on display on the road to Ostenso, the capital of the archduchy. There were twenty of them, in a neatly organized row, each twenty strides apart. Father had had them put here, along the road to the capital, as a show of respect towards the Archduke. Alive, they had tried to run from Ostenso, and now their corpses returned.  They looked like scarecrows on fields, without the splayed arms. They were dead sacks of meat waiting for the butcher’s knife. A few were escaped slaves from Ostenso. Most were locals who had chosen to help them in their escape. Somebody had rammed a small, blue falcon figurine wing-tip first into one’s eye, a young woman. She had been one of the Steel Falcons, a group of rogue knights from neighboring Andoran who terrorized Cheliax, freeing slaves, killing merchants, and stealing resources, in the name of their revolution. Even when operating in disguise abroad, those fools couldn’t leave their tokens home.

But most were locals of Maryon, my Father’s people. And it saddened me. I wondered how could they betray him, and aid the terrorists and lawbreakers. Father was a brutish leader, as was the norm in Cheliax. But he was a fair ruler, something I knew peasants and slaves could expect from only a few Chelaxian nobles.

Sitting opposite to me in the faintly trembling carriage, Mother followed my gaze outside. “Poor people”, she sighed but didn’t avert her eyes. She was no stranger to death. “They all deserved it, Mother”, I said, frowning. “Aiding and abetting our enemies.”

“I know, Luther. Yet..” The words died. “Did you know some of them?” I asked. She nodded. I should’ve known. For all the merchants, artisans and soldiers working for Count von Rusdorf, the Countess knew five times as many shepherds, weavers, innkeepers, vendors, and peasants.

“Why do you do this?” I asked after a moment, after the last body had fallen out of sight. “What?”

“All this”, I said, gesturing at the fancy carriage we were in and the road outside. “Travel to the countryside, visit the peasants, when Father has to exercise his power and make examples.”

“Every time the axe of the Count’s executioner falls in great numbers, I set out to meet the people”, she started. “I give a coin to those who are loyal”, she held up a finger to hold back a retort I was about to voice, then continued, “but not to those who are weak and have not earned it. In your Father’s name, I reward loyalty and respect. I help them remember the good of his reign, this House has brought them. Safety. Prosperity. Peace. Opportunities.”

“The rabble take your coin, and they forget about it the next day”, I challenged her. “Maybe some do. But others learn that our family doesn’t only take, but it gives as well.” Sunlight streaming through the tiny windows made her light hair, tied to flow to her left side, glitter. The color of her hair was one of many ways she stood out from the women of Chelish nobility. She wasn’t from Cheliax originally: she was a daughter of a massively wealthy Korvosan merchant, and Father had married her to seal a deal that dwarfed all in living family history. I wondered if Father ever thought he had actually received something far more valuable as the sweetener.

“How do you know they respect you and not your coin, and your words?” I asked, my tone now less confrontational. “How do you know they respect you and not your blade?” She threw my question back at me and pointed at my prized greataxe that rested on the carriage bench at my side. “If they do not, they can die”, I shrugged, but immediately sensed somehow that my answer was practiced. It had come too swiftly, felt too nonchalant.

She shook her head. “It is not just coin I give. It is about my promises. I take their hopes and pains to your Father’s court. They might forget what I share from my purse, but when your Father’s engineers come to fix a well, or a bridge, or when a healer comes by, or when his merchants bring home a better price for their cotton, they remember me and the promises I made. They learn that serving your Father has its rewards as well. They learn that he cares.”

I scoffed at that. My Father, a caring figure. “Father doesn’t care.”

“In his way he does. At least, he doesn’t want his subjects to perish, at least if he can help it. It suits him that they remain loyal and productive.”

“They are just rabble, Mother. There’s more where they came from.”

Mother was patient with me. Always, to a fault.

“They are lower class, but you must show them some respect as well. Our family’s, this nation’s, way is to rule through fear. For our family, success is a matter of principle, quite literally. Principles and laws are in your blood as a noble son of Cheliax. Yet, if you want to rule well, you have to balance fear and respect. Be principled and demanding, yes, but remember that much of your power comes from those around you. As a leader, you are a conduit of power first and foremost, not its only source.”

I let her words sink in. At the same time, they both complemented and contradicted everything I had been taught so far. But more I thought about my Mother’s advice, the clearer it became to me. My Father was a relentless, merciless leader, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew that he could not govern by fear alone. To maintain order, he needed something else as well, I realized. Father used Mother cleverly. She was the soft hand to his iron fist. But there was power in her ruby-red silken glove too.  I realized then why Mother had wanted me to join her that time. This, like so many things in my life, was a lesson.

We traveled a good half an hour in silence before we arrived at our first stop. It was a hamlet of dozen or so huts and wooden houses whose name I had forgotten, one of too many to count in Maryon. I grabbed my axe before I pushed open the carriage side doors and got out.

“Do you have to carry that awful thing everywhere? You’re intimidating as it is”, Mother quipped. I said nothing but hung it on a specially-made belt over my shoulder and offered her my hand to help her step out to the sunlight and down onto the dirt. Around us, Mother’s personal guard was already organizing, clearing out a protective circle. The most senior guard, Proximus, was barking orders to the locals to stand clear of the Countess. I looked around too. At sixteen, almost seventeen, I was already taller and bigger than many grown men, so I could see far. The peasants were slowly gathering around the carriage and the horses of the guards, like cows coming back to the barn after a long day at the field. They were of all ages, from grey-bearded shepherds with shuffling steps to crying little babies in the laps their mothers. Some looked fearful, some craned their necks to see what was happening. “This is the Countess von Rusdorf”, Proximus was shouting behind his helmet. “Bow to your Lady!” The Countess, I could hear the awed hushes among the crowd as their heads dropped, one by one. It’s her.

“Good folk of Redstone”, Mother stepped past me towards the crowd, spreading her arms and beaming her warm smile like a sun. Of course she knew the name of the little inconsequential village. She raised her voice. “Raise your heads and listen. In the name of your Count, I’ve come to hear of your plights and worries, and to reward you for your continued loyalty.” As Mother walked closer to the edge of the center of the crowd, the guards closed ranks, keeping their hands extended forward and on the hilts of their swords. But Mother shook her head. “Guards, step aside”, she commanded and she broke through her protective circle. A young peasant girl, with a terribly weeping child on her arms, dared to approach Mother. “My Lady, I beg you, my daughter isn’t getting well, we need a healer here..” Mother hushed her and brushed the child’s thinly haired head. “Help will come.” She produced a silver coin and planted it among the bundled cloths the baby was wrapped in.

“Thank you, my Lady”, the peasant girl answered, tears of gratitude now flowing from her eyes as well, and retreated. Encouraged by her example, people flooded to my Mother, swamping her with questions and pleas. She responded to each call, one at a time, always making eye contact, taking people by their filthy hands, touching their dirty faces. Each received a silver coin from Father’s coffers, even those who came to her with no pleas but only weary smiles and flat words of praise.  Her guards kept vigilant but remained back, giving her space to interact with the villagers. I too stood where I was, watching Mother work her simple magic, wondering if she actually had magical powers I knew nothing of.

It went on for minutes until someone in the mass of people started to make his way to Mother, pushing and shoving people off his way. “My Lady”, that someone howled in distress as he approached. Immediately, the house guards moved forward, but Mother held up her hand. As she did, I could just see the concern in her eyes before she turned to face the man. “Horatio”, she simply responded as the old man finally emerged from the crowd only an arm’s reach from her.  His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot from crying. “My daughter, my son, my stars, why did you have to kill them”, he wailed and fell to his knees before her. “Horatio, Horatio”, Mother took both of the hands of the grieving old man to hers and gripped them tightly. “You must know they broke the Count’s law”, she explained, and I remembered her sad look as we passed the line of hung traitors. I couldn’t see it now but I heard it in her voice. “They didn’t know what they were doing.. my only children.. they were innocent”, the old man wept. She let go of the man and raised her voice, addressing all present instead with a combination of hardness and empathy. “Merus and Isilia of Redstone were found guilty of treason and assisting the Steel Falcons in smuggling of escaped slaves.”

“They were innocent..” the man whimpered at her. “They paid for their crimes with their lives”, she went on, not heeding him. “I wish there was another way, but the laws of Cheliax and your Lord, Count von Rusdorf, are clear. Obey them, and the Count will provide you protection and prosperity.”

“No no no noo..” The old man moaned.  “Horatio, they failed you and the Count”, she spoke to the man again, more sternly now, but the man wasn’t listening. Instead, he just shook his head violently, madly. “Guards”, Mother called, and the closest two began to approach. Horatio wailed his denial for the last time and suddenly tried to reach the hem of Mother’s skirt. Before she could move away, the old man clutched at it with all his strength and pulled in desperation, as if his life depended on it.

Mother lost her balance and stumbled down on the dirt ungracefully. I heard a strange thud. As I lost sight of her, from my position at the back, I was already moving, my lips forming the first word I had ever uttered.

The guards were faster than me, and they slammed at Horatio, their shields pinning the powerless man to the ground. I couldn’t see Mother behind the wall of people.

Then the first cry of panic went out. Then another, then a third. The mass of people recoiled. Proximus shouted a question to his Lady. I got to Mother, saw her still lying on the dirt. Saw the rock, size of a helmet, sitting idly next to her head. Her half-open, unmoving mouth. The lack of life in her eyes. The slowly spreading pool of blood under the wisps of her light hair.

“Mother?” I fell next to her, shook her, tried to wake her up. Around us, people were backing away in mounting terror. “Countess”, Proximus gasped as he got to us. “Circle formation“, he screamed the order to his men over the commotion. But all I could concentrate on was my Mother, who laid there motionless, unresponding. I felt unreal, empty.  I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t believe it. It had only been a heartbeat, and she had been taken from me.

Then came the rage and pain, all at once, in a black and red wave. I resisted the urge to yell, to let it boil out uncontrollably. Instead, I let it consume me.

I got up, felt the clarity of hate dispel the dizziness of the shock. Some of the villagers gazed at us, mouths open like stupid fish. Like sheep. The smartest had fled or were fleeing. I drew my greataxe behind my back. “Orders, Lord?” Proximus asked me, in visible shock.

“Move aside“, I told the two house guards pressing down the old man who had killed my Mother. They stood up from top of him. “I meant no harm, please”, the old man whimpered, eyes full of tears, and raised his hands, palms open, toward me.

I gave him death by the axe, as was our old Ulfen way.

And more death followed.