“I know better than to question your ciphering,” Emil said, “But there are a few practicalproblems.”

Medric snorted dismissively.

Garland said to Emil in a low voice, “Are the Sainnites really doomed?”

“Hmm.” Emil leafed through the sheets, and gradually his face became nearly as gleeful as Medric’s. “Look at those numbers! That’s got to be giving some poor officer any number of sleepless nights. They have only a few hundred children, and it takes as many as ten to replace one dead soldier? They’re doomed, all right! Medric, bring the candle, will you?” Medric sat on the bed with the candle in his hand, grinning like a maniac. In a steady, clear voice, Emil began to read, interrupted only by Medric’s occasional snort or chuckle.

The people you callSainnites would more properly be called Carolins– born into a soldier caste that happened to serve under the warlord of Sainna.My father served thatwarlord with honor until he was driven out of Sainnaby fellow Carolins, who served different warlords and were simply following orders.My father was just a young man then and it’s difficult to say how accurate his version of events is, butI have talked to several otherveterans and they all tell a similar story, so I believe it is true enough. They say the lord of Sainna was a greedy man whose holdings encompassed a great stretch of sea coast, including several important harbors. In Shaftal, the harbors are important to the fisherfolk who ride the high tides over the rocks that will wreck their ships at lower tides; in the harbors the fishing boats can safely unload and can take shelter from the storms that make navigation so hazardous. But in Sainna, the harbors were big and deep, accessible at any tide, with long docks that served ships two or three times the size of the largest Shaftali fishing boat. These harbors were places that people went to make their fortunes, young people hoping to sign on as sailors, merchants with money to invest, hoping to sell a boatload of something to another country at a profit, and the Lord of Sainna himself, who collected inordinate shipping taxes and regularly punished his land bound neighbors by refusing to let them travel to the coast or to use his harbors. So the day came that three of the neigh‘ boring warlords banded together against him, having agreed in advance that they each would get one of Sainna’s ports and a corridor to the sea. Their Carolin soldiers were no better fighters than those of Sainna, but the numbers were overwhelming, and they literally drove the army of Sainna into the sea. Eventually, the refugees reached Shaftal, far to the north, after a hazardous crossing of an unfriendly sea that sometimes is covered with floating ice mountains.

My father was eighteen, more than old enough to fight, a marksman of some renown already, but who was, he used to tell me, of no use at all in that last, chaotic battle where it was all hand‑to‑hand fighting and there was no time for loading pistols. He survived unscathed by simple luck and can scarcely remember his escape, he was so bewildered and exhausted with fighting. He had four close friends of his own age, and by the time he was climbing the ladder to board a commandeered ship, all of his friends had disappeared and he never saw them again, nor did he know what had become of them. Of all the griefs he bore in his short life– for he was dead at thirty‑five– it was the loss of those friends that weighed most heavily on him, for though there are many criticisms my father’s people justly deserve, it can’t be said that they aren’t loyal to their friends.

My father drew a map once, of that faraway land he hailed from. He could not read or write, but he remembered where the major rivers and boundaries lay, and where an army on the move might easily travel, and what lord ruled what territory. He had studied that map as a boy, for like all Carolins, his life depended upon knowing where he was and where he was going. Still, he might leave on a journey through a friendly neighbor’s territory and have the friend turn enemy before the journey’s end, and there was nothing he could do to save his life then.

Lately, travel in Shaftal has also gotten hazardous, for there are bandits and hostile farmholds where before they were unheard of. Still, it is difficult for a Shaftal‑born person to imagine what my father’s homeland was like: I have caught glimpses of it in my dreams, an easy, sunny place of gentle winds and fertile soil, crisscrossed by guarded boundaries and walls to keep one lord from encroaching on another’s territory. The soil is rich because of all the blood that’s been spilled in defense or attack, and some of the slights over which these lords still battle are centuries old.I askedmy father once to explain it tome, why the people all are willing to die over some high lord’s whim, and my father was angry with me thatI did not instinctively understand the requirements of asoldier’s honor.

To understand the Carolins– the Sainnites, as they are called here–it is necessaryto understand what they meanby honor. To discipline oneself to accept and fulfill one’s station and to do it with pride, that is honor. To do as commanded without question or hesitation, that is honor. To want with all your heart and soul for your people, whoever they are, to gain ascendancy at any cost, that is honor. To dishonor oneself, then, is to question tradition, to think for oneself, to desire differently from one’s father or mother. These are the things a Carolin soldier will never do, or at hast will not admit to.

I am,by Carolin standards, a dishonorable man. I suppose I should disclose this fact early, so that you might slam this book shut in disgust if that is your bent, and not waste further time on it. I am writing this book that you might understand the tragedy ofmy father’s people, how their honor has brought them to the point of extinction in this land they once thought their refuge. Andyet I am writing inmy mother’s tongue, Shaftalese, because it is the Shaftali people who most need to learn from this history. The worst thing they have done to you, who are my mother’speople, was not to destroy your government, take your food andchildren, deny your traditions, or outlaw your greatest powers. The worst thing they have done is to replace your version of honor with theirs. They are making you, the Shaftal people, into Carolins. So when you read this book, read it not as a history of the enemy, but as a history of your own future: what will happen to Shaftal when the Carolins are extinct, but live on in you and your children. Rather than defeat the enemies, you must change them– or else, someday, their story will be your story.

The text continued, but Garland fell asleep. When he awoke to rising daylight, Emil and Medric were still huddled together in the bed with him, with pages of the manuscript scattered about. They seemed to be arguing their way through it, word by word, and inexplicably enjoying themselves so much that it had not occurred to them to go to sleep. Garland stumbled downstairs to light the ovens and knead the bread dough. His hands knew their work, and he shaped his loaves in a daze of sleepy satisfaction.

Karis appeared and went outside with the scrap bucket, and soon Garland could hear the ringing of her ax. Then Medric poked his head in the kitchen door and asked, “Did you tell her?”

“Tell who what?”

“Very good.” Medric disappeared, and Garland heard him go out the front door. “Karis!” he called. “Karis, Karis, Karis!”

The ax fell silent. Garland left his loaves to rise and his ovens to heat, put on his coat, and took another coat from the hook for Medric. Outside, the ravens fought over the scraps that Karis had spilled across the snow. The ax, driven into the stump, quivered in the cold glare of the sun. Karis and Medric sat together at the top of the porch steps. Her hair stuck out stiffly below her cap; her eyes were as blue and crisp as the sky. Garland put Medric’s coat on him.