Robin Hobb Soldier Son Trilogy by Robin Hobb

Author:Robin Hobb
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fantasy Fiction, Shamans, Fiction, Fantasy, General, Soldiers, Epic, Nobility
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

VISITOR

I tried to find the rhythm of my days again, but it was broken. The snow was too deep and the ground too frozen for me to dig graves, and there was very little else for me to do. I missed my schoolbooks. Writing in my journal almost made things worse. I had far too much time to think. Magic, my father’s opinion of me, Spink’s knowledge that I was in Gettys, Colonel Haren asking my opinion on the road dilemma: I had too much to ponder.

I tempted myself to go into town, thinking that any sort of company might be a welcome distraction, but I felt an almost irrational fear that I would encounter someone who knew me from my academy days. I isolated myself at the graveyard until a rider came out one day to fetch me. An old man had died. I hitched Clove to the wagon and went to town for the coffin and corpse. The old man had been an ex-soldier and a drunk who had died in debt to everyone who had tried to befriend him. The poor fellow had no mourners to follow me out to the grave site.

Once I had him loaded, I steeled my heart to my own callousness and completed my own necessary errands. I picked up hay and grain for Clove and some basic food supplies for myself. I forced myself to take my noon meal in the mess hall. Ebrooks was at table, shoveling his food into his mouth as if it were a competitive sport. From him I learned that Kesey was sick in bed with a toothache, but hadn’t the courage to have the molar pulled.

“That side of his face is swollen like a melon, and so tender he can’t eat a bite. Even drinking water hurts him. I told him, go have it pulled and be done with it. How could the pain be any worse? He still hopes it will go down by itself. But he almost counts himself lucky to have been sick in bed last night after what happened in the streets.”

“Why? What happened?”

He shook his head and then lowered his face to his plate to shovel in another large spoonful of beans. He spoke around them, muffled. “Ain’t sposed to talk about it. Gonna be hushed up and smoothed over, like they allus do.”

“What?”

He swallowed noisily and gulped coffee to be sure the food had gone down. He glanced around the mess and then leaned closer to me. “Murder last night. I heard something ’bout a whore, an officer, and some soldiers. What I heard was the officer fancied the bit and got mad when the soldiers had her first. He shot one of the boys. Something like that.”

“That’s ugly,” I said, leaning away from his breath.

“Life’s ugly,” he agreed, and went back to his food.

I turned my attention to my own plate, and a short time after that, Ebrooks pushed back from the table and left. My meal was four rashers of bacon and a steaming sea of brown beans with biscuits.

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