The Jongurian Mission Read Online Free Page B

two men sat without speaking or looking at one another for some time, each slowly drinking their cup of milk while weighing the words they would use to persuade the other. Halam broke the silence first.
    “Trun, we’re the only family the boy’s got now, and really, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve not been much of an uncle for him over his life.”
    “That’s for damned sure! You’ve been in Plowdon, or moving around the province. But in all those travels, you never saw fit to stop by and pay us a visit, which you easily could have done more than once every handful of years. The boy looks up to you, Halam, heaven knows why, but he does.”
    “Aye, I’ve not been the best uncle, not like you Trun, and my duties in Plowdon have caused me to lose sight of family.”
    “Aye,” Trun replied.
    “Now Trun, we both know the value of hard work, we’ve both our sweat these fields, and I know full well that you still do.”
    “ Aye,” Trun said, wiping some caked soil from his clothes. “Just because you’ve got your courtly duties to perform in Culdovia doesn’t mean there’s any task for Bryn to perform. Come harvest time we’ve got the clearing of the fields to do and the preparing for the winter to come. There’s certainly no lack of work on this farm, and I can’t do without an extra set of hands.”
    “ Listen Trun, the boy is smart; he can’t spend the rest of his life like you, farming.”
    “ And why not,” Trun answered, his anger obviously rising at the perceived sleight.
    “ He can go places and be more than just another of the countless farmers in Tillatia. Every time I come back here and see Bryn working he’s nearly always got his head in a book, thinking, studying, and improving his mind. There’s a place for that far from these fields.”
    “ Aye, and how often has he nearly upturned a whole row of freshly laid seeds with his eyes on a book and not on the work under his feet?”
    Halam sighed. “Listen, this is a chance for the boy to get out of Tillatia, to see the world, a world at peace, which is a chance that neither of us ever had, Trun.”
    “ If the world had been at peace all those years ago, you can rest assured, brother, that I never would have left the farm.”
    “ Let him come with me, Trun, let him see the country he lives in, the country he’s spent so much time reading about in books. Let him walk its roads and breathe its air. A man needs to see the results of his daily labors. I’m not talking about stealing him from you forever, Trun. All I’m saying’s that I want to take him along for this round of talks in Baden. He’d be home in time to help with the harvest come fall.”
    “ And a fine use he’d be to me then, his head filled with all manner of courtly intrigue and politics, thoughts a-flutter with the latest gossip about the capital’s rising lords and ladies. He’d not know the back end of a hoe from the front by the time you sent him back from that Culdovian hornet’s nest.”
    Halam sighed and shifted in his chair, unhappy with the way the discussion was going. His brother had always been stubborn, and he saw that the task of convincing him was going to prove much more difficult than he’d earlier expected.
    * * * * *
    After looking after the animals and completing his other chores, Bryn sat down on a large rock set off from the barn to rest and think. He couldn’t understand why his Uncle Halam was so interested in taking him to Baden, or why his Uncle Trun was so intent on having him stay on the farm. Bryn would love to go and see the capital of Culdovia, and all the interesting sights along the way, but it also made him nervous. He’d never been further from the farm than the half-day’s ride to Eston, and he considered that town of about a hundred people large. To travel to Baden, where the people numbered in the thousands, well, he just wasn’t sure he was ready for that. It was not that he hadn’t thought about it before. What boy