The Treasured One (The Dreamers 2)

‘I’m glad that I’ll be in the army when I grow up, then,’ Narasan declared. ‘From what I’ve been hearing here lately, we’re the only honest people in the whole Empire.’

‘That pretty much sums it up, yes,’ his father agreed with a wry smile.

It was perhaps a year or so later when Narasan, Gunda, and Padan began their more formalized education, and of course, their teachers were all professional soldiers, and ‘We don’t march until we see the money,’ seemed to turn up in every class they attended.

Padan, whose sense of humor was perhaps a bit warped, frequently suggested that it might very well be an excellent motto to be added to the army banner. Narasan was a little startled when their instructors appeared to give Padan’s silly proposal some very serious thought.

The studies associated with their classroom education were extremely tedious, and the boys in Narasan’s class much preferred their training on the drill-field. Steel swords were heavier than the wooden toy swords of their childhood had been, and it took the boys a while to toughen up their muscles. The phalanx was the central part of Trogite tactics at that particular time, and the boys spent endless hours growing accustomed to marching in unison with their shields overlapping and their long spears locked in place. Unification lies at the core of the phalanx formation, and the drill sergeants kept shouting. ‘Unification! Unification!’ at the boys until Narasan got tired of hearing it. He soon came to realize that if he held his shield no more than an inch out of line, the drill sergeant would start screaming at the top of his lungs.

It was shortly after Narasan’s eighth birthday when his father’s army was hired to put down a slave rebellion off in one of the provinces in the western part of the empire. Narasan’s father had never actually said as much, but Narasan rather suspected that his father disapproved of slavery. Narasan himself had never even seen a slave, but rumor had it that a fair number of the soldiers in his father’s army were former slaves. When a young man appeared at the gate of the army compound and announced that he was interested in a military career, nobody asked him too many questions. There were also rumors that a goodly number of the soldiers in the compound had spent their early years involved in various criminal activities, but nobody asked those men any embarrassing questions either.

When the army returned from the campaign in the west, Narasan’s uncle Kalan was marching at the head of the column, and that sent a sudden chill through Narasan.

‘It was one of those ridiculous things that should never happen,’ Kalan sorrowfully told Narasan and his mother later that day. ‘A runaway slave had somehow found a broken spear that only had about half of its shaft. We didn’t even know that he was hiding in the bushes when we marched up that hill. When he saw us coming, he jumped up, threw the spear in our general direction, and then ran off like a scared rabbit. I don’t think he’d ever so much as had his hands on a spear before, but the cursed thing took my brother right in the throat, and he died almost immediately. I’d venture to say that rascal could have thrown that broken spear a thousand times and never duplicated that first cast.’

‘Did you chase the slave down?’ Narasan’s mother demanded in a bleak-sounding voice.

‘Oh, yes,’ Kalan replied grimly, ‘and it took him a long, long time to die.’

‘That’s something, I guess,’ Narasan’s mother said.

‘It’s not much, dear,’ Kalan apologized, ‘but it’s about all I can give you. We put down that stupid rebellion in short order after that. The men were very unhappy about what’d happened to your husband, so they made examples of every runaway slave they got their hands on. I’m fairly sure that the slave-owners will have to do their own farming for the next few years, because we didn’t return very many live slaves to them when it was all over.’

‘That’s just too bad,’ Narasan’s mother replied. Then she rushed from the room, and Narasan could hear her wails of grief coming from the adjoining chamber.

During the next days and weeks, Narasan’s mother grew increasingly distraught. Narasan was trying, without much success, to deal with his own grief, but in time his uncle Kalan helped him through the worst of it. As his mind returned to some degree of normalcy, he came to realize that his mother was no longer rational. It was quite obvious that her grief had unhinged her mind. Narasan decided at that point that he should never marry. A soldier’s life could end quite abruptly, but the grief of a soldier’s wife could obviously go on forever. Narasan saw quite clearly that a real soldier was married to the army anyway.

Narasan’s uncle Kalan had filled his brother’s shoes as the commander of the army, and he kept a close eye on his nephew.

When Narasan reached his twelfth birthday, army custom placed him in the ranks of the cadets - the boys with army backgrounds who were extensively trained so that they’d be ready to receive commissions when they reached a certain age. Narasan excelled as a cadet, and when he turned fifteen, he was offered a commission as a very junior officer in his uncle’s army.

He went through several wars before he turned twenty, and it was quite obvious that he was going to go far and fast - assuming, of course, that he’d live long enough to move up through the ranks.

He’d reached the rank of sub-commander by the time he turned thirty-five, and his boyhood friends, Gunda and Padan were not far behind him. The three of them served very well, much to the satisfaction of Commander Kalan. Narasan was fully aware of the fact that his uncle was keeping a close eye on his progress, so it came as no great surprise when, as the climax to the celebration of Narasan’s fortieth birthday in the officers’ lounge, his uncle rose to announce that he was retiring, and that Narasan would replace him as army commander.

‘I’m not really ready for command yet, Uncle Kalan,’ Narasan protested.

‘You’d better get ready then,’ his uncle declared, ‘because like it or not, you will be the commander when the sun comes up tomorrow.’

‘How do you plan to spend your retirement, Commander Kalan?’ Narasan’s friend Gunda asked.

‘I thought I might catch up on my sleep,’ Kalan replied. ‘Since I won’t be a soldier any more, I won’t have to roll out of bed at first light the way I’ve been doing for the last forty years. Noon sounds about right to me. Then I’ll grab a quick bite to eat and go back to bed until supper-time.’