Chapter 57: Leonard the Accident – In search of a leader
In the morning, Leonard went to Tuen. His people – his people? Since when had he adopted those people? They only recognized him as a person because of Jean. Since when did he care? His people. Yes, they were his. Injured souls, broken things, cats with burnt tails.
Burnt by the remains of a butchered revolution. Burnt by abandonment. Henrique abandoned them to hide in the shadows. Why had Olivier abandoned them? Whatever the reason, Leonard didn’t want to go to Olivier, who had already abandoned his people. His, Leonard’s. There had to be someone else in Tuen, like in Debur there used to be Maëlle, Neville, even the Eslarian with his discrete, fine-flowered wisdom. Thaila with her pragmatic determination. Robert with his pation. Not one of them abandoned Debur. Not even Neville, who left but became a wall against Fulbert in the Mouth of War. Baynard had never felt as safe as when Neville took command of Fabec. Never had it felt as unprotected as now.
There had to be someone in Tuen. Leonard crossed wagons filled with something that looked like grain, though it was not yet harvest time. Winter still bit finger tips and ears. He didn’t think about it, but walked straight tot Tuen where he showed his documents to a soldier, who said the mayor would be at the Plume when Leonard asked.
The soldier’s directions were brief and not enough for someone who didn’t know the city. Leonard had to ask twice before he found the inn, where he entered quickly to escape the cold. Leonard felt the cold deeper than other people. Or rather, the cold went right through to his bones, but it stopped at other people’s skin.
Inside the Plume there was a monster. Leonard had never seen na aberration apart from himself, but there was a man, or something like it, his skin stretched around the muscles like lava.
Accident and monster froze, the first in shock for what he saw, the later astonished that he’d been seen. The monster retreated away from the light. It wasn’t a flight like a scared rabbit, but a careful, wolf-like retreat. What did the invader want?
Another monster appeared from a door behind the counter. He was equally distorted and just as scary. The third monster, who came in with a bucket and a mop, was smaller than the other two, and was only half melted. When Leonard saw the mop, he realized that the other two were also carrying brooms and cloths. Leonard stepped in and closed the door.
‘I was told the Mayor of Tuen was here,’ he said.
The half-melted man said the mayor was home and gave Leonard directions. One of the other monsters chided with him.
‘Don’t give away information like that!’
‘It’s too tiring to be suspicious all the time,’ said the half monster.
Leonard ran away to the cold outside. He remembered having to cut away Jean’s tail when he saved the cat from the fire. Maybe if those men inside the inn removed their skins, they’d be less frightening than they were now.
The half-monster’s directions were very precise and Leonard had no trouble finding the mayor’s house. He knocked once, twice, three times.
‘He won’t answer.’
Leonard turned around to face the blond, chubby woman coming down the street.
‘Not today,’ she said. ‘Today is the day his brother left. Every year our mayor locks himself up and dies for a day. Tomorrow he’ll wake up sober, palid, and won’t talk about Luc until this day next year.’
She invited Leonard to have a bite at her inn.
‘It’s not far, my Plume,’ she said. When he slowed down, she laughed. ‘You’ve been there, haven’t you? I bet you met the Burned ones.’
Leonard felt ashamed. He was an aberration himself, what right did he have to be horrified by other aberrations? He followed the inn keeper. ‘Call me Joanna,’ she said. He followed her while she told the story that had ended with those men being burnt. For the second time that morning Leonard went into the Plume. This time it was awe, not fear that struck him.
‘A dragon,’ he said.
‘A red dragon,’ said the man called Coalim.
Joanna served coffee and porridge with raisins. Leonard fished away the raisins, one by one.
‘You never went hungry,’ said Joanna.
‘I’ve always been hungry,’ said Leonard. Since he couldn’t be satisfied anyway, why eat something he didn’t like?
He thought of asking the burnt soldiers to organized his dissident warriors, but as he ate, he watched them and decided those were soldiers who followed, not men who led. The half-burnt man didn’t even look like a soldier. Leonard needed a leader. Joanna kept on talking about one Pierre, who stopped dragons and chatted with wolves of Sátiron. One thing called Leonard’s attention: that Rimbaud’s Caravan changed its course because of Pierre. All the rest was mystery, magic and darkness. Leonard had too much of that in Jean, in himself. He needed someone solid to command his dissidents.
Tuen must have a captain, where could he find one? Joanna was about to answer when the door opened and a black man with popped out eyes walked in.
‘There he is,’ she said. ‘Captain Gaul of Tuen. And that,’ she pointed to a younger man behind Gaul, with red skin, honey eyes, thick black hair, ‘is Pierre. I thought you’d left,’ she said to Pierre.
‘I had,’ he said. ‘Gaul convinced me to come back. I’m stopping by to drop my backpack, but please don’t put it away. If the soldiers of Tuen are really as unprepared as Captain Gaul says, I’ll stay. If I think they are ready to defend the city, I’m leaving.’
‘I’m an accountant,’ said Gaul, ‘and Olivier always said that the soldiers would learn what they had to if they were picked to go to the Mouth of War. Tuen’s soldiers are the least prepared of all Franária.’
Pierre put his backpack behind Joanna’s counter and left with Gaul. Leonard followed. He didn’t like to leave Jean alone for too long. Jean didn’t realize he was human. People didn’t know he wasn’t. Jean still killed any possible rival and, since he didn’t understand human behaviour, anyone could become a potential rival. Leonard needed to get back to Chambert, but he also needed to organize his people. Debur had shown him what anarchy was like, the law of the strongest, the systematic crushing of the weak. Leonard followed Gaul and Pierre out of the city, to an open field where soldiers practised.
If only Neville came back! Where did that idea come from? Leonard hadn’t thought of Neville in a long time, but he had the feeling that, if he kept walking south, to the Land of the Banished, he’d find Neville.
I’m losing my mind, he thought. Noboty knew where Neville was. He could have died in Fabec, though there were rumours that he invaded Patire and killed Prince Faust. No one knew what really happened on the other side of the Oltiens.
What was Prince Faust doing there anyway? And how would he get there before King Fulbert?
The royal family of Patire was not famous for its normalcy, logic and emotional harmony. Fulbert didn’t wait for battle, he chased it, even if it meant the sacrifice of sound strategy. It was Faust who kept Patire in one piece all this time. Without Faust, Fulbert would have thrown his army against the Mouth of War until the last drop of Patirean blood was spent, then Patire would have been conquered. Fulbert was the kind of force that didn’t stop, that didn’t think: it went on until it conquered or perished.
It was always Fulbert who chased the War. Leonard almost lost sight of Gaul and Pierre. Baynard needed to bring together what warriors it had left because Fulbert wasn’t about to sit and wait. If Faust was really dead, and with Fabec and Neville gone, the mad man was loose.
There was another prince, wasn’t there? Where was Frederico, the Weak?
‘Are you convinced now?’ asked Gaul.
Leonard was at the top of a hill. The other two had stopped a few steps below and they were watching the soldiers exercising. Lost in thought, Leonard only looked at the soldiers now. When he saw how unprepared they were, Leonard sat down with a thump. Pierre must have made a face that mirrored what Leonard felt, because Gual said:
‘I told you. My men were never formally trained. The War never threatened to come to Tuen and Olivier left all the training in charge of the captains in Debur or Fabec. You carry one of Nakamura’s swords.’
‘The Chinese one,’ said Pierre. ‘I intend to bring my master with me when I come back.’
‘We don’t need a master in the arts of Nakamira,’ said Gaul. ‘Soldiers are numbers and I understand numbers. Their strength is in their weight, in the commander’s skill, and in strategy. A lonely coin is but a piece of metal, but a number of them makes a fortune. Pierre, I introduce you to the army of Tuen: a bunch of lonely coins.
Leonard heard the sound of something small cracking. Sitting on the hill, a few steps above him to the left, was a girl eating nuts. She had black hair of silk, slanted eyes the colour of the universe, which was funny because Leonard never had a drop of poetry in him and didn’t really care for the vacuum above the clouds.
‘Do you want one?’ she offered him a nut.
He accepted, feeling down. If that was the leadership Tuen had to offer, he had come here in vain. Leonard tried but couldn’t break the nut. The girl took it from him, cracked it and gave it back.
Followed by Gaul, Pierre walked down to the warriors of Tuen. Leonard couldn’t hear what he said, but the soldiers began to form groups to simulate battles. Pierre then came back to the hill and stood not far below Leonard. He gave a few instructions and, suddenly, the soldiers were moving like armies. Leonard straightened up. Pierre kept on giving commands and the warriors joined their shields like a wall. The shields either oepened to attack or joined for protection.
‘That’s a Satironese strategy,’ said Leonard.
‘It’s actually Viking,’ said the girl with the nuts, ‘re-used in Sátiron.’
‘It was Yukari Nakamura who invented that way of using shields.’
‘To imitate is not to invent. Look,’ she pointed to the field, ‘he’s now trying the Roman way.’
Two things botherede Leonard: that Tuen was that unprepared, not knowing strategies that Neville taught the Deburians ages ago; that the girl eating nuts spoke so seriously of that Viking Roman people who didn’t exist.
‘Do you want a lollypop?’ she asked. ‘People give it to me when I’m a child. I don’t like sweets.’
Pierre kept on simulation battles, giving instructions, changing directios, adjusting techniques. The Tueanese shields were small and square. It was possible to improvise the Viking wall, but they were too small for the Roman block. Leonard was impressed with the change in those soldiers after Pierre’s instructions. He had watched Neville and Neville’s father when the former captain still had his legs. He remembered how Neville taught the soldiers to move their shields and made with his arm an elipse that would hit the enemy’s neck after a movement with the sword.
‘You,’ Pierre pointed at Leonard. ‘Come down here.’ He borrowed a shield and gave it to Leonard. ‘Show them what you were doing.’
‘He sees,’ said the girl with the nuts. ‘That’s always a good sign.’
‘Come practice with us,’ said Pierre to Leonard, who now had a lollypop in his mouth.
‘Me?’ asked Leonar. ‘Practice?’ Can’t you see me? Don’t you see I’m weak? That I don’t have to body to be a warrior? That I barely even have a body?
Pierre’s eyebrow made a question.
‘I don’t… have… I’ve never, well…’ Even as he mumbled, Leonard walked the distance between him and Pierre, accepted the shield.
‘Your name?’ asked Pierre.
‘Leonard the Accident.’
‘Pierre of the Frontier.’