Baylet seemed satisfied and stood. He motioned for me to follow, and I’d just started after him when a hand caught me tightly by the wrist. I looked down to find Palandas holding me. His grip seemed unusually strong for a man his age.
“The best song, when singing the end of someone, is the one you can make while watching him die.” He moistened his lips with his tongue. “That’ll be one you must know awfully well, my young friend. Since your voice will have to carry on when the rest of you would rather not.”
Palandas held me until I nodded my understanding, which I did without any idea what he really meant. He let me go, and I followed Baylet through the tent flap and south across the frozen field. The promise of sun had grown in the east as a faint line of light blue.
We gathered our mounts at the tree line, and the field leader led me south and east through an elm and broad-pine wood. For the better part of a league we rode. As the trees began to thin, he pulled up and dismounted. I slid from the saddle and stood beside him. The shanks of our mounts steamed in the morning chill.
Finally, I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Why haven’t you brought the Mor Refrains? The letter I received made it sound dire.”
“War is always dire,” he said flatly.
“I came through Talonas, Cyr, and Weilend. All burned. All empty. My history isn’t strong, but I don’t remember us ever losing three cities to those from across the Soren.” My breath plumed before my face as I spoke. “Asking me to leave Descant. I assumed you needed someone—”
“Your training is complete then?” Baylet asked, one eyebrow arching.
“No,” I admitted. “But the Refrains haven’t been sung in so long. I assumed you’d want someone—”
“The Refrains have never been sung.” His voice held a pinch of reproach. “The first Mors brought them out of the Bourne to keep them from being sung. Which the Quiet would surely have done, if they’d ever gotten their hands on them.”
“It’s why the Sellari come,” I said, stating the obvious. “It’s why they’ve always come. If we fail, they won’t hesitate to sing them.”
Baylet turned to face me. His stare chilled me deeper than the frigid air. “Then don’t fail.” He pointed ahead. “Twenty Shoarden men wait for you at the tree line.”
Shoarden men. As a child, I’d thought Shoarden simply meant “deaf.” Later, when I began to study the Borren root tongues, I learned that it meant “to sacrifice sound.”
“Shoarden,” I muttered to myself.
“Most Lieholan aren’t skilled enough to have their song resonate with a specific individual or…” he looked away to the south, where the Sellari camped, “group or army or…race.” He looked back at me. “It’s a technique of absolute sound. A technique you’ll possess once your training at Descant is complete. Until then, your song affects any who hear it. So, some of the men sacrifice their hearing in order to guard Lieholan in the field. They take the name Shoarden. Today, I’ve assigned twenty such men to you. Beyond the tree line, a thousand strides or so, the Sellari eastern flank is camped. They’ll come hard. Don’t let them through.”
He’d apparently said all he meant to say, and quickly mounted.
I struggled to remember the thing I’d wanted to ask him. A hundred questions about the Refrains clouded my mind, but I mentally grasped it before he rode away. “My da.”
Baylet held his reins steady, staring ahead. “His sword sang, Belamae. Any man who stood beside him in battle would say the same.” He then turned to look at me. “Karll was a friend. Proud as hell of you. He’d be angry with me for sending for you. But a son has to…Quiet and Chorus, son, if I’d lost my da I’d want to return murder on the bastards. Thought you’d want the same opportunity. Besides that, we need you. We’re outnumbered…” His eyes, if it was possible, looked suddenly stonier. “Don’t fail.”
It was a command. But it was also a plea. The desire to step into the breach for my people filled me like a rush of warm wind. It’s hard to explain that feeling. The other thing that was true was that Baylet had put the perfect words on the quiet reason inside me that had brought me here: return murder on the bastards. I wasn’t proud of that feeling, but I couldn’t deny it either. And in the end, I didn’t find a thing wrong with it.
I started for the tree line before Baylet kicked his mount into a canter. I did not pause when the twenty Shoarden men fell in around me. I did not pause when I came in sight of the first Sellari scout. I did not pause.
And when a hundred, two hundred of the invaders lined the far meadow, coming on with a steady stride, I recalled the music I’d reviewed that morning in the company of four grim men. A dozen of those songs I knew backward and forward. Three times as many other songs I had full command over: lyric, phrasing, rhythm, and melody. Songs that might suit the kind of destructive influence that filled my heart at that moment.