Valorian Read Free Page A

magic, only in the powers of their four deities.
    The leader gestured to the fire with a broken length of deadwood. "Magic doesn't exist, Clansman.
    Only skill."
    "Don't tell General Tyrranis that," the dark-haired soldier said with a smirk. "I've heard he's trying to find the secret of magic."
    "Shut up!" snapped the sarturian.

    The mention of General Tyrranis made Valorian grit his teeth. The general was the imperial governor of the huge province that encompassed Chadar and the foothills where Valorian's clanspeople were forced to live. To say he was hated was putting it mildly. Tyrranis was an ambitious, ruthless combination of astute politician and merciless military man who crushed anyone who tried to thwart him. He ruled his province with enough violence and fear to keep the people firmly under his heel without any thought of rebel ion.
    Valorian had heard rumors that the general's ambitions reached as high as the imperial throne, so the mention of Tyrranis's search for magic didn't surprise him. Perhaps with luck, Valorian thought to himself, Tyrranis would kill himself in some foolhardy experiment looking for something that didn't exist.
    Seeing the sarturian watching him, Valorian quickly removed any expression from his face and set to work. He didn't want to stay with these men any longer than necessary. He wanted to feed them and get their tongues talking about more useful information—such as why they were in Chadar, what was the Ab-Chakan garrison doing, and where was a good trail to the Ramtharin Plains.
    As rapidly as he could, Valorian built his fire hotter and roasted strips of deer meat over the glowing coals. The soldiers plunged into his cooked offering with the voraciousness of hungry wolves.
    By the time they stopped eating, the deer carcass was virtually stripped, and the rain had died to a heavy mist. The soldiers leaned back, laughing and talking and drinking from their last flask of wine. No one offered wine to Valorian or paid him any heed as he sat in the shadows under a tree and gnawed on the last of the venison.
    The clansman felt a brief pang of guilt for filling his stomach with meat while his family was probably eating watery soup and the last crusts of old bread. The winter had been hard, and there were very few stock animals left in their herds. The family was counting on him and the other men to bring in meat for the cooking pots. Perhaps, he hoped, one of the other hunters had had some success. He drove the feeling away and concentrated instead on the talking soldiers.
    The meat and wine had indeed soothed their tensions, setting their tongues free to air their gripes and worries. Their disregard for the clansman was so complete, they seemed to forget he was there.
    For a while, the five men simply conversed about the everyday complaints of soldiers: bad food, hard work, loneliness. Warm in his cloak and weary from the days of hunting, Valorian listened to their conversation with growing drowsiness. His eyelids drooped. He was beginning to wonder how he could turn their talk toward the Ramtharin Plains when the short legionnaire said something that jolted the clansman wide awake.
    "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm glad to be leaving that forsaken pile of rocks." The man took a long swig from the wine flask and passed it on. "Good riddance to Ab-Chakan!"
    "How can you say that?" another soldier said, his voice thick with sarcasm. "I'm going to miss the place—the cold, the wind, the heat and the fleas in the summer, no town in sight for league after league after league. Why would we want to trade that for a comfortable billet in Tarnow?"

    One man slapped the eagle emblem on his chest, grinned, and said, "By the sacred bul , I'll be glad to see Tarnow again. I haven't been home in ten years." The speaker, a dark-haired soldier, slid off his seat to stretch out full length on his back. "Say, Sarturian, has General Sarjas said when we're being withdrawn?"
    A grunt escaped the