Shaman's Crossing (The Soldier Son Trilogy #1)

“Nevare?” my father prompted me sternly, and I suddenly realized that my musing had kept me from replying to his news.

“I am speechless with joy at what you have won for me, Father. I will try to be worthy of the lady, and show Lord Grenalter the full nobility of my bloodlines.”

“Very good. I am glad you are conscious of the honor he does us in trusting one of his daughters to our household. To your future bride, then!”

And again we all lifted our glasses and drank.

That was my last night as a boy in my father’s house. With my eighteenth birthday, I left behind all childish pursuits. The next morning, I began a man’s schedule, rising with the dawn to join my father and brother at their austere breakfast and then ride out with them. Each day we rode to a different part of my father’s holdings to take reports from the supervisors. Most of them were men my father had known in his cavalry days, glad to find useful work now that they were too old to soldier. He housed them well, and allotted each a garden patch, pasturage for a cow or two milk goats, and half a dozen chickens. He had aided many of them in acquiring wives from the western cities, for well my father knew that although the sons of such men must go for soldiers, their daughters might very well attract cobblers or merchants or farmers as husbands. Our little river town needed such an influx of tradesmen if it was to grow.

I had known my father’s men all my life, but in the days that followed, I grew to know them even better. Although they were but common misters now, having given up their ranks with their uniforms, my father still referred to them as “Corporal” or “Sergeant,” and I think they enjoyed that acknowledgment of their past deeds.

Sergeant Jeffrey oversaw the care of our sheep in their rolling riverside pasture. That spring we had had a bumper crop of lambs, with many ewes dropping twins. Not all of the ewes had the milk or patience to care for two lambs, and so Jeffrey had had his hands full, recruiting Plainspeople nippers from the tamed Ternu villagers to help with the bottle feedings. The youngsters came to their tasks with enthusiasm, happy to work for a penny a day and a stick of sugar candy. My father took pride in how he had tamed the Ternu, and was now training their offspring in useful endeavors. It was, he maintained, the duty of the Gernian new nobles to bring such benefits to the formerly uncivilized folk of the Plains and plateaus. When he and my mother hosted dinner parties and gatherings, he often deliberately steered the talk to the necessity of such charity work, and encouraged other new noble families to follow his example.

Corporal Curf lacked part of his right foot, but it did not slow him much. He oversaw our hay and grain fields, from plowing to planting to harvest. He had much enthusiasm for irrigation, and often he and my father discussed the feasibility of such an engineering project. He had seen Plainspeople employ such tactics to bring water to their seasonal fields in the east, and was eager to attempt an experiment to duplicate their success. My father’s stance was to grow what the land would naturally support, in accordance with the good god’s will, but Curf burned to bring water to the upper fields. I doubted the question would be resolved in my lifetime. Curf worked tirelessly for my father, trying all sorts of tactics to try to restore the fertility of the land after its third year of use.

Sergeant Refdom was our orchard man. This was a new area of endeavor for us. My father saw no reason why fruit trees should not flourish on the hillsides above the grain fields. Neither did I, but flourish they did not. Leaf curl blight had all but killed every one of the plum trees. Some sort of burrowing worm attacked the tiny apples as soon as they formed. But Sergeant Refdom was determined, and this year he had brought in a new variety of cherry that seemed to be establishing well.

Each day we returned to the house by midmorning. We shared tea and meat rolls and then my father dismissed me to my classes and exercises. He deemed it wise that I learn the basics of husbanding our holdings, for when my soldiering days were over, I would be expected to come home and serve my brother as his overseer in his declining years. Should any untimely illness or mishap befall Rosse before then, he could by law ask the king that his soldier brother be returned to him for the “defense of his father’s lands.” It was a fate that I nightly prayed to be spared, and not just out of fondness for my solid older brother. I knew that I had been born for the cavalla. The good god himself had made me a second son, and I do believe that he grants to all such the fiber of character and adventurous spirit that a soldier must possess. I knew that eventually, when my days of riding to battle were done, I must return to our holdings and probably take up the duties of Corporal Curf or Sergeant Refdom. All my sons would be soldiers, and to me would fall the training of my elder brother’s soldier son, but all my daughters would take whatever dower they carried from our family holdings. It behooved me to know the operation of them so that when my time came to contribute directly to their upkeep, I’d be a useful man.