Soldier at the Door(5)

Shin frowned. “Volunteer? I’ll take care of him.” In a whisper he added, “Something must be wrong with him if he wants to work for me without wages.”

Karna laughed as Shin went into his office. Inside stood a strapping young man, already at attention.

Shin nodded a greeting. “Captain Perrin Shin,” he held out his hand in introduction. “And already I doubt your ability to be of service.”

The young man with light brown hair swallowed hard as he shook the captain’s hand. “Sir?”

“You want to do this without pay? What does that say about your intelligence? Not a great deal.” Shin winked at him and sat down at his desk. He gestured for the hopeful volunteer to take a seat across from him.

With a hesitant smile the large boy sat down.

Shin shifted some neat stacks of paper needlessly around on his desk before launching into his routine of subtle interrogation. There were only a few other cases of volunteerism he had ever seen, and each one ended up with the prospect taken in chains to incarceration. The army was no place to hide from law enforcers, difficult parents, or expecting girlfriends. Even if he didn’t sign up officially, someone’s still going to write down his name.

“So,” Shin said, finally looking up at him once he was sure the young man had grown uneasy with waiting, “my lieutenant says you’re interested in volunteering?”

The hopeful cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, I am. For two, maybe three seasons, sir. Just to see if I really want to stay.”

Shin squinted. “Two seasons? Work half a year without slips of silver?”

“To be honest, sir—”

Deceit frequently begins with the words To be honest, Perrin thought to himself.

“—I’m not sure I’m up to being a soldier. But I’m very interested in helping track down the Guarders. I’m good at tracking. My father has a herd of cattle that are always escaping. I can find a lost calf anywhere.”

Shin nodded once. “Good skill. But Guarders don’t moo. And we’re not allowed to track into the forest.”

“But sir, I can tell you if someone has come out of the forest, then gone back in.”

Shin couldn’t help but smile at his confidence. “Well, I’d be foolish not to accept your help, then. I can let you stay in the barracks and eat in the mess hall, but I can’t issue you a uniform if you’re not official.”

The young man began to smile back. “That’s all right, sir! Don’t need one. And I have a little bit of savings, so I don’t need slips of silver.”

Shin pulled out a clean paper. “Well, then, I don’t have a stamped form to fill out for volunteers. You must be the first. But I do need some information. Name?” He would check it, along with variations, with the chief of enforcement later.

“Shem Zenos, sir.”

He offered that up easily, Perrin thought. Usually young men stammer a bit with a false name, even if they practiced it.

Still . . .

Shin furrowed his brow. “Zenos? Never heard that last name before. Not from Edge, are you?”

“No, sir. I kind of wanted to get away from home. So I came north.”

“Understood,” he said casually as he wrote the name. “Where are you from? Mountseen? Quake? Rivers?”

“From between Flax and Waves, sir.”

Shin blinked, completely taken aback. Even though he knew the villages were at the furthest southern edges of the world, still he turned to stare at the large map of the world that hung on the wall.

“Really? Talk about getting away from home. You can’t get any further than that.”

Zenos shrugged. “I know, sir.”

Perrin’s suspicions rose, but he remained relaxed. “Take you a long time to get here?”

“Weeks, sir,” he sighed. “Sold my horse down in Trades to have enough silver to get up here, so I wouldn’t have to touch my savings. Walked the rest of the way.”

Shin watched him for a moment. “Sold your own horse?” Few young men owned their own horses. Only very wealthy families could take on the expense of an extra animal.

Even Perrin had never owned his own horse, he remembered with the smallest twinge of jealousy, although he ‘claimed’ one or two over the years that the stables at the garrison allowed him to ride.

And although he was allowed to choose a horse at the fort to be designated his own, he had yet to do so. None of the animals were the right blend of strength and speed to match Perrin’s build. If a stallion was fast enough, it also grew tired too quickly. If a mare was sturdy enough, it couldn’t keep up. Perrin alternated between three different animals, occasionally wishing he could find the right one.