Surrender None

Chapter Eight

The first scream brought him out of his musings; he looked across the ploughed strips to see nothing at first. Perhaps someone had spilled a kettle of hot water. He scratched the back of one leg with his other foot, and clucked to the oxen. They leaned into the yoke. Then another shriek, one he would have known anywhere. Raheli! He dropped the plowhandles, and started across the field at a run. Then the horses came, from between the cottages, and crashing through the back gate of his barton. Lords’ horses, with the bright orange and green and yellow he had seen going in the manor gates the day before. Another scream, and another, shriller—one of the little girls? He had yelled himself before he realized it, a deep roar of rage and pain. Up the field, another plowman answered.

“Stop, you!” yelled one of the riders, waving something at him. Gird paid no mind, charging toward his own gate. Now he could hear a man’s voice, yelling, and more screams down the lane. The same rider yelled “Guards! Ho!” The horsemen closed toward him, the horses plunging with excitement. Behind them now he could see footsoldiers in Kelaive’s bright orange. The sun glittered on their helmets, on riders’ buckles and saddlefittings, on the stubble of last year’s grain. Gird took a breath, slowing to see how he might get by. Now one of the riders was above him, the tall dark horse snorting and prancing.

“Get back, fellow!” the rider said. Gird peered up at a narrow pale face. “It’s nothing to do with you. Get back to work!” The voice had fear in it, as well as arrogance. Was he armed? Gird tried to circle the horse, but the horse spun, and blocked him. “Get back!” the man said, louder. Gird looked aside; the guards were almost on him, their cudgels ready. Another scream, this one a man’s death-cry, ending in a gurgle. Gird flinched, and shivered—it had to be Parin, he was the only one inside. His belly churned; his vision blurred. Then pain stung him awake; the rider had slashed his back with a whip. He spun, fury once more driving out fear, but the guards had him, four of them. For all he could do, it was nothing—they had him face-down in the fresh-plowed furrows, choking on dirt, two of them on his back, as the screams went on—and then died away. When they let him up, the other plowmen were back at work, and the riders were gone, and the grim-faced guard sergeant gave him his warning.

He knew before he came inside what he would find. The shattered barton gate, the ewe he had brought in for nursing lying dead in the barton, her guts strewn wide, their one pig gone, the cottage doors smashed, the great loom broken: that was bad enough. But there lay Parin, his face one curdled mess of blood and shattered bone, and there lay Raheli, naked, the slight bulge of her belly that had promised so much to her and Parin. He knelt beside her, so full of grief he could not breathe. When he felt that first warm breath on his hand, he could hardly believe it. Alive? After the blow that had split her face all down one side, and drenched her in blood? After that blade or another had bared her ribs on one side, and sliced deep into her hip? After the beating, and the rape? He looked at the body he had not seen since she became a woman. Even at that moment, he noticed—and hated himself for noticing—the white beauty of her skin, the full young breasts, the long curve of back and thigh now streaked with blood. Her breath touched his hand again, and he drew a long shaky breath of his own. Alive. He had to do something—

He looked around the room again, seeing destruction everywhere, and out the front door, now splintered—something stirred, there. He could not leave Raheli, but he must; he had to get water, rags, something. He stood too quickly and his head spun. Staggering, he made it to the door and then crouched, heaving all he had eaten into the trampled torn dirt of the yard.

Then he looked up and saw the rest of it.

She must have been at the well, for the blood trail started there, and the water jug lay broken beside it. Girnis lay sprawled between the well and door, her slight body twisted as if she’d been thrown against the wall. And Pidi, where was Pidi? Gird found him on the far side of the well, fists jammed into his mouth, trying not to cry; a hard blue knot on the side of his head and a welt on his back.

He was shaking with rage and grief; he could hardly lower the bucket to the water. The weight of it full dragged on him, steadied him; he got it up, and scooped a handful for Pidi, who said nothing but drank it.

“Stay here,” he said to the boy; Pidi nodded. Gird went to Girnis; she was alive, but unconscious. Her left arm was crooked, and swelling: broken. He glanced around for something to splint it with, and caught sight of someone, a kerchiefed head, over the sidewall. It disappeared; he did not call. He found a piece of the splintered door, and tore a strip from his tunic. Girnis did not stir when he handled her broken arm. Should he carry her inside? No. Girnis would do well enough out here until she woke, he thought, and knew that he wasn’t thinking as well as he should. But Raheli needed him. He took the bucket inside, breathing hard through his mouth. The cottage stank of blood and brains and slaughter. He had killed animals more cleanly—but he could not stop to think of that.

Raheli’s face, if she lived, would have a scar from hairline to jaw. He was not sure she would live. The blade that had cut her had gone through into her mouth, come near her eye—might have broken her jaw or her cheekbone as well, he couldn’t tell. Raheli had had the parrion of herbal wisdom from Mali; it was not his knowledge. Blood pooled under her head; her scant breaths gurgled. Blood in her mouth, what if she choked? He looked wildly around, and this time found the scattered bedding, the cooking cloths for straining, the cloths for women in their time. As quickly as he could, trying not to think beyond the immediate wound, he pressed the cleanest rags into her wounds. The long shallow gash along her ribs had nearly quit bleeding anyway; the deeper wound where the blade had met her hip oozed steadily, reddening the cloth. Her face—her face was hopeless, he thought at first, as blood soaked one cloth after another.

“Gird?” He jumped, swore, and turned to glare at the light that poured in the broken door. Then he saw it was a woman, though he could not make out her face against the light. “Is—is Raheli alive?”

“Just.” His voice grated and broke; he wanted to burst into tears. Hard enough to be alone with this, but harder with someone else.

“Let me see.” She came up to him, and now he could see it was Tam’s aunt, old Virdi. Her breath hissed out. “Aahhh—Lady’s Peace, she’s bad—”

“I know that.” He had never liked Virdi, but she had the healing in her hands, so his mother had said. And no scorn to her for not saving Mali—healing in the hands was nothing in a plague of fever.

“The lord, he did this?” He thought he heard derision in her voice, and bristled. Next she would ask why he’d let it happen. But when he glared at her, her eyes were soft, not accusing at all.

“He did. I was—plowing. They—” He could not go on.

She nodded. “I saw across the fields—the guards knocked you down, there were too many. Lady’s Curse on Mikrai Pidal Kevre Kelaive: may he never know peace.”

He had never heard a woman lay a curse before, but there was no doubt Virdi had done just that. So simple? He shivered, suddenly cold. Her hand touched his head, dry and chill as a snake.

“Near broke your head, they did, too—” He had not realized that he’d been hit, but where she touched him was a heavy pain—and then it was gone, and she was rubbing her hands briskly on the hearthstone. She gave him a quick smile. “Rock to rock; the hearthstone’s strong enough.” She pointed, and he saw a little crack he didn’t remember seeing.

Her hands on Raheli’s head hardly seemed to have weight; they hovered, touched as light as a moth on a nightflower, retreated. She sighed, then lifted the cloths he’d laid on that torn face, and hissed again. “Get more water—and—” a quick look at the hearth, now fireless, “—go to Tam’s, and bring a live coal.”

“But will she die while I’m—?” Gird didn’t finish the question, for she interrupted.

“Not if you’re quick about it.” She had poured the remaining water in the bucket into the one unbroken pot, and he took the bucket and went out. Pidi still crouched by the well, but now he was crying, shoulders heaving. Gird drew another bucket of water, and found the dipper somehow unbroken, caught in the hedge. He squatted beside Pidi.

“Come on, lad—let me see—” Pidi looked up, eyes streaming.

“I—I couldn’t—” He winced as Gird touched the lump on his head.

“You couldn’t stop them. Neither could I.”

“But—but they—they hurt Raheli—and Parin tried to fight—”

“Pidi, listen. I have to get fire. Can you stay here?”

“Raheli? And—and Girnis! They—hurt her too!” The boy grabbed Gird’s arm with both hands, threatening to overturn the bucket. Gird set the bucket carefully aside and gathered up his youngest child, letting him sob. He wanted to do that himself, would have given anything for a strong shoulder to cry on, but all the ones he’d known were gone. He patted the boy’s back, carefully avoiding the welt on it, and carefully not thinking. Enough to comfort one who could be comforted. “I’m so sorry,” the boy was saying between sobs. “I’m so sorry—”

“It’s not your fault.” Gird tried to keep his voice steady, soothing, as if Pidi were a sheep caught in a briar, a cow with her head through a gap. Finally sobs quieted to gulps. Gird unhooked the boy’s hands and moved him away far enough to see his face. “Here—let me wipe that for you—” Pidi nodded, mouth set tight, and Gird cleaned his face. “Now—I still have to go get a firestart, from Tam’s house. Will you stay here quietly?” Pidi nodded, solemnly, tears threatening again. “I’ll be back,” said Gird. Pidi said nothing.

He saw no one on the way to Tam’s cottage, though he was aware of a stir in the village, of people watching him and ducking from his sight. All the doors were shut. He knocked on Tam’s door, and Tam’s wife, white-faced, opened at once. She paled even more when she saw the blood on his clothes.

“Virdi sent me for a firecoal,” he said, as calmly as he could. Tam’s children were huddled around the hearth, silent and staring. “Our fire’s out.” Tam’s wife nodded. Without saying a word, she went to her hearth, and took a burning brand, far bigger than the custom was. She offered it with a stiff little bow, and he took it gingerly.

In the sunlight, the flame was pale, hardly visible; he could feel the heat of it as it blew back toward his face. He knew by that he was walking fast, too fast. Pidi waited in the yard, sitting now by Girnis. He nodded to the boy, and stopped to pick up some splinters of the door.

Inside, Virdi had Raheli’s face clean of blood, but for the wound itself. She had her hand over Raheli’s cheek, her expression withdrawn. Gird stepped carefully around her and laid the only fire pattern he knew, the shape the men used in the open. The brand from Tam’s house lit it instantly, and warmth returned to his hearth. He went back out for the bucket, and picked up more wood. For an instant, he wondered if it was bad luck to burn doorwood, but then shrugged. How much worse could his luck be? He put the bucket down beside Raheli, and laid the wood carefully on the fire.

“Is there a boiler left?” asked Virdi suddenly. Gird looked around the chaos in the room, and then went to check in the back room. There he found a single metal pot, the one Mali had used for steeping her herbs, dented but still whole. He took it to Virdi, who nodded. “Good. Start heating water in it—put it near the fire, but not in it. And then clean your hands. I’ll need your help.”

They had Raheli’s wounds bound, and her body covered with the cleanest cloth, when the steward came. All that time anger had grown in Gird’s heart, anger he had controlled so long that he had half-forgotten some of it. Now it grew as swiftly as a summer storm-cloud, filling him with black rage. He had tried so hard: he had suffered so much already. In spite of all he had brought up three of his own children, and two of Arin’s—he would have had his first grandchild the next year—and the lords could not let even one hardworking farmer alone, in peace.

Yet when the steward came—an old man, now, slightly bent but still capable of rule—Gird said nothing of it. He heard what he expected to hear: he, as head of his household, would bear the penalty for his son-in-law’s attack on the count’s son and his friends, and for his own attempt to get to his cottage to defend them. The loss of the cottage he expected, immediate eviction, fines, loss of all “so-called personal” property, damages assessed for the breakage of the lords’ property in the cottage.

“The count remembers you,” the steward said slowly, his eyes drifting from the broken loom to the smashed door. “He will be content, he says, if you sign yourself and all your children into serfdom, become his property in name as in fact.” He paused, and his voice lowered so that Gird could hardly hear it. “Were I you, Gird, I would flee: he’ll name you outlaw, but you would escape for a time. Otherwise—you well understand what kind of man he is; he would take delight in all you fear, in far worse than you have seen, in this manor. I have done all I can.”

“You serve him.” That was all Gird dared say, and he clamped his mouth on the rest of it.

“I serve him—I gave my oath, long ago, to the count’s father; had he not died young—but that’s no matter. I break my oath by this much—to warn you, to say that for this night I can promise you no pursuit. Say you will clean and mend what you can by midday tomorrow, when you must be evicted: I will tell him that.”

It was all the kindness left; years later Gird realized what the steward risked, and what he would suffer if anyone found out what he had done.

Chapter Nine

All the times he had thought about leaving, it had never been like this. He had imagined sending the children away somewhere (but where?), going himself to join the little band of rebels he had first met—but not this terrifying journey. He was sure they were leaving a trail a child could follow through the narrow wood. Anyone would expect him to go that way—but what other way was there? He could not have strolled past the manor itself with Raheli on his back.

It still worried him that he’d left the cottage such a wreck. It wasn’t his fault, he knew that, but a lifetime’s work and care nagged at him. He should have—

Ahead, two rocks clacked sharply together. Gird halted, breathing hard. Behind him, he could hear Fori’s breathing as well, on the other end of the litter. Raheli was heavier than he’d guessed. Pidi, beside him, glanced up and Gird nodded. Pidi clicked two pebbles in his hand, mimicking the stones’ sound. Another clack, this a triple. Pidi replied with the triple of triples Gird had taught him. Trouble, that was. Danger, trouble, need help—any of those.

Raheli moved on the litter, and moaned softly. Gird looked over his shoulder. Blood had seeped through the pack of moss on her face, staining it dark. He heard a twig crack, and looked ahead. There were three, coming down the slope. One was Diamod. He could have wished it was someone else.

“Gird—what is it?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“Only the rock signals of trouble, that someone was needed. Yours?” Diamod looked past him at the children.

“Aye. My daughter’s hurt bad; they killed her husband. Outlawed me, for what he did, and for trying to get to her—”

“I’m sorry.” Diamod actually sounded sorry; Gird had been half-certain that he would dare amusement or scorn. “So—you’re fugitives now?”

“Yes. I don’t know if Rahi will live—”

“Later. Now we must get you away.” Diamod waved the other two men forward, and they took the handles from Gird and Fori.

“These are smooth!” said one, clearly surprised.

Gird hawked and spat. “Scythe and shovel handles,” he said. “I’m outlawed anyway; might’s well bring something useful.”

Diamod grinned at him, then sobered as he looked at the others. “Are all these coming?”

“Fori’s my brother’s son. His wife died last year, in childbirth. The other two are mine, and have no place in that village.”

They set off again, faster for the unwearied strength of the two men carrying Raheli. Gird strained his ears backwards, expecting to hear any moment the cry of hounds, horses’ hooves crashing in the leaves behind them. But he heard nothing, only their own hard breathing, their own footsteps.

They followed the water up out of the wood, past the cleft Arin had shown Gird all those years ago, where the Stone Circle visitors had waited for so many nights. Up a narrow, rocky defile, and carefully around the west slope of the hill, keeping as much as possible to the low scrub. Gird looked up once or twice, seeing folds of land ahead he did not know, but looked back oftener. When would the pursuit come, and how bad would it be?

By noon, when the sun baked pungent scent from the scrub, they had found another watercourse, this one winding away to the south. Along its banks low trees formed dense cover. Diamod lagged far behind, watching for pursuit, as the others paused for a brief rest. Gird dipped water from the creek, and bathed Raheli’s face.

She was awake again, lips pressed tightly together, eyes dull. He did not want to speak to her—what could he say?—but she questioned him. “Where—are we?”

“South of the village, beyond the hill. We had to leave, Rahi.”

“Parin—they killed him—”

“Yes.”

Her hand strayed to her belly, as if feeling for the child within. “I—don’t want to lose the baby—”

“Virdis said you would not, unless you got fevered. She gave me herbs for you.” He dug into the roll of clothing and bandages for the little packet of herbs. Rahi shook her head.

“I’m fevered now—I can tell. If I lose it—” Her voice trailed away, and her eyes fixed on some distance Gird could not fathom. Then she looked at him directly. “The little ones?”

“Pidi has a lump on his head, but he’s all right. It would take more than a lump to damage him. Giri has a broken arm. Here—you need to drink—” Gird lifted her as gently as he could, but Rahi flinched and moaned. He could feel her fever burning through the wrappings Virdis had put around her. She sipped a little water, then shook her head. He laid her back down. She alone, of all his children, reminded him of Mali—she had that same hair, the same quick wit. He could not lose her. But her fever mocked him. Of course he could lose her, as he had lost his parents, his brother, his brother’s wife, the babies that had died. He could lose her quickly or slowly, as the fever raged or died, or as pursuit caught them.

He looked around at the others. Giri, her arm bound tightly to her side, looked pale and sick; she had never been as strong as Rahi. Pidi, whose lump had matured into a spectacular black eye, sat watching Gird alertly. Fori, much like Arin but with Issa’s slender build, sat hunched with his head down, breathing heavily.

“Fori?” Gird put a hand on his shoulder, and Fori jumped. When he looked up, his face was streaked with tears.

“I should have stopped them,” Fori said, through sobs. “I—I should have been there.”

“I, too—but we weren’t. And if we had been, we’d have been dead as Parin is now.”

“But she’s—”

“Your cousin, and my daughter.”

Diamod came back before he could say more, breathing hard as if he’d been running a long way. “I saw guards on the near side of that first hill, moving slowly. Not the way we’d come, exactly—I don’t think they have a trail. But we can’t stay here. We must move under cover, and keep moving.”

This time Gird and Fori took the litter again, and the other two men took their bundles. One of them led the way southward, summering as Gird thought of it, keeping them along the creek bank as the water deepened and broadened, then leading them eastward, sunrising, up a tributary. Diamod lagged behind, overtaking them again near dark, when they’d stopped under a clump of pickoak where a spring came bubbling up from the rocks.

“They didn’t follow,” he said, before anyone asked. “They’ve put someone up on the hill—I saw a glitter up there—but no sign of real pursuit. We must stay out of sight of that hilltop, and no fire, but we can think now where to take the—your daughter.”

Gird hoped his face did not show all he felt. “She’s fevered now,” he said, ducking his head. Raheli had said nothing, all the afternoon, but she seemed to be in a sick daze. He had gotten her to drink a little twice, but nothing more.

“She needs shelter, and a healer. Have you any family in another village?”

Gird shook his head. “Only my wife’s—my dead wife’s—family, over in Fireoak. But I don’t know where that is from here, and even so they might not take her.”

One of the other men turned to him. “Fireoak? My sister married into that village. They don’t have much trade, those folk, but they’re kindly.”

“We can find Fireoak easily enough, but it will be days of careful travel. We’re a day or more from the sheepfold where the dances are.”

Gird nodded. “I know that.”

“For healthy men it would be a day’s journey, but carrying her, and with the others, it will be two, I think. Then from there to Fireoak is—”

“A day, like this. But it’s the only shelter between, that fold.”

Mali’s parents, like his own, had been dead some years, but her brother was alive. He squatted beside the litter and laid a hand on Raheli’s head.

“Mali’s child?”

“Aye.” Gird felt restless, in here where he could not see.

“We heard there’d been trouble your way. Your name was mentioned.” Gird was sure it had been, if the guards had been by. “They said a man died—?”

“Rahi’s husband, Parin. He was inside; he tried to fight them off.”

“Mmm. And you?”

He felt the rush of shame again. “I was out plowing—when I heard her scream, I tried—but the guards got me—”

Mali’s brother shook his head. “None o’ us can stand against them. It’s no blame to you. Well. I reckon we can take her in, see if she heals—and the younger girl?”

“Has a broken arm.”

“She’s welcome here too. The lords come here rarely, and one woman—one girl—but the thing is—”

“You can’t let us stay. I know that.” Gird sighed, heavily. “I—I’m an outlaw now, we both know that. Trouble for you. But if you’ll care for them—”

“We will.”

“Then I’ll leave now, before I bring trouble.”

“Will you tell us where?”

“No. What you don’t know, you won’t be withholding. If Rahi lives, I may come through again sometime.”

Mali’s brother nodded. “I can give you a bit of food—”

“Save it for Rahi—I’m giving you two more mouths to feed, maybe three if she doesn’t lose the child—”

“Never mind. We’re glad to help Mali’s daughters. May the Lady’s grace go with you.”

Gird almost answered with a curse—what grace had he had from the Lady this several years?—but choked it back. The man meant no harm, and maybe the Lady meant no harm either. He and Fori eased out of the barton, keeping close to the walls and low, until they came between the hedges that edged the fields of Fireoak. Back up the grassy lane—the plough-team’s lane, he was sure—to the heavy clump of wood that reminded him of the way the wood had been when he was a child. Here no lord had thinned it, and the oak and nut trees made a vast shade.

Diamod was waiting, with Pidi; the others had disappeared. Gird and Fori scooped up the sticky paste of soaked grain, and ate it from dirty fingers. For the first time, Gird felt like a real outlaw. No fire, no shelter, no table or spoons—only the knife at his belt, and the farm tools he had carried away.

“And now?” Diamod asked. “What will you do now?”

Gird looked sideways at him. “What is there to do, but try to live and fight?”

“You had said you were thinking of teaching us what you knew of soldiering.”

Gird wiped sticky fingers in the leafmold, and scowled at the result. “I had some ideas, yes. But your people—were they all farmers before?”

“Most of them. I was a woodworker, myself. There’s a one-armed man who was a smith, but crippled for forging long blades.”

“But most have used farming tools, sickles and scythes and shovels and the like?”

“Yes—but why?”

Gird had crouched by the trickle of water to scrub his hands clean; now he flipped the water from them, and leaned back against a tree. Something poked him in the back, and he squirmed away from it.

“You can’t fight soldiers as an unarmed mob; we know that already. It takes too many—and too many die. Drill would help; having a plan and following it, not rushing around in a lump. But weapons—that’s the thing. We’ll never get swords enough, not with the watch they keep on smiths. I’d thought of making weapons from the blades of scythes or sickles, but that too would take a smith willing to work the metal, and then training to use them. I had just begun sword training myself; I’m not any good with a sword.” He paused to clear his throat. Diamod was scowling, and now he shrugged.

“So? Are you still saying there’s no way peasants can defend themselves?”

“No. What I’m saying is we have to use what we have. The tools the men are used to—the tools we can make, or that we have already—and then learn to use those tools for fighting.”

Diamod looked unconvinced. “Are you saying that ex-farmers with shovels can stand up to soldiers with pikes and swords?”

“If we can’t, then we’re doomed. I don’t know if they—we—can. But we have to try.”

“And you’ll teach us.”

“I hope so. There’s something else—”

“What?”

“Just an idea. Let me tell the others about it later.”

Diamod led Gird, Fori, and Pidi through the woods that lay between Fireoak and the next holding to the east. Gird tried to keep in mind how they had come, but soon found all the trees, trails, and creeks blurring in his mind. That night they spent in the wood, eating another cold meal of soaked grain. The next day, they followed a creek most of the day, coming at last to a clearing where the creek roared down a rocky bluff. At the foot of the waterfall, a rude camp held a score of men.

In the center of the camp was a circle of stones around the firepit, symbolic of their name, but actually used for seating. The lean blackhaired man who appeared to be the leader did not rise from his stone when Diamod led Gird forward.

“So this is Gird of Kelaive’s village, eh?” The man looked worn and hungry, as they all did. Diamod started to speak, and the man waved him to silence. “I’ll hear Gird himself.”

Gird stared at him, uncertain. So many strangers—not one familiar face beyond Fori and Pidi—upset him. He could not read their expressions; he did not know where they were from, or how they would act.

“Have you ever been out of your vill before?” asked the man, less brusquely.

“Only to trade fair, one time, and to Fireoak when I was courting,” Gird said. The man’s voice even sounded strange; some of his words had an odd twang to them.

“Then you feel like a lost sheep, in among wild ones. I know that feeling. Fireoak’s in your hearthing, anyway—hardly leaving home and kin, like this. Diamod has told us about you—that you sent grain, the past few years, after your friend was killed—”

“Amis,” said Gird. It seemed important to name him.

“And now you’ve run away to join us. Why?”

Gird got the tale out in short, choked phrases; no one interrupted. When he finished, he was breathing hard and fast, and the others were looking mostly at their feet. Only the blackhaired man met his eyes.

“Outlaw—this is what you chose. After telling Diamod you would not consider it—”

“While I could farm,” Gird said. “Now—”

“You can’t farm here,” the man gestured at the surrounding forest. “So what skills do you bring us?”

Gird was sweating, wishing he could plunge away into the trees and lose himself. What did these men want? Were they going to grant him shelter or not? “I thought I would do what Diamod asked before: teach you what I know of soldiering.”

Someone snickered, behind him. The blackhaired man smiled. “And what do you know of soldiering, after a lifetime spent farming? Did you bring swords, and will you teach us to use them? Or perhaps that scythe slung on your back will turn to a pike at your spellword? Diamod told me he had found someone, a renegade guardsman, he said, to teach us soldiers’ drill, but what good is drill without weapons?”

The tone of the questions roused his anger, and banished fear. “Without drill you couldn’t use weapons if you had them. With it—with it, you can use whatever comes to hand, and make a weapon of it.”

“S’pose you’ll lead us into battle wi’ sticks, eh?” asked one man. Others chuckled. “Fat lot of good that will do, a stick against a sword.”

“It can,” said Gird, “if you’ve the sense to use it like a stick, and not try to fence with it.” This time the chuckles were fewer; he could see curiosity as well as scorn in their faces.

“ ’Course,” said the black-haired man, “we’ve only got your word for it, that you can fight at all.”

“That’s true.” Gird relaxed; he knew what would come of this. They wanted to see what Diamod had dragged in, but it would be a fair fight. “You want to see me fight?”

“I think so.” The blackhaired man looked around at the others. “Aye—that’s what we want. Show us something.”

“Let’m eat first, Ivis,” said one of the other men. “They been travelin’ all day.”

“No guest-right,” the blackhaired man scowled. “Until this Gird proves what he is or isn’t, I’m not granting guest-right.”

“No guest-right,” said Gird. He was surprised to find outlaws following that much of the social code. Food was more of the soaked grain, and a cold mush of boiled beans. Looking around, Gird saw only the one firepit, and no oven. The blackhaired man unbent enough to explain.

“Sometimes the lords hunt this wood, and their foresters use this clearing. So a fire here is safer than one elsewhere in the wood; folks is used to seeing smoke from about here. We tried to build an oven once, but they broke it up when they found it.”

“Where do you go when the foresters come?” asked Gird.

“That you’ll find out after you fight. If you convince us to let you stay.”

When Gird had eaten a little, he stood and stretched. The others went on eating, all but a strongly built man a little shorter than he was. Gird glanced at the black-haired man, who grinned.

“You’ll fight Cob; he’s our best wrestler. Used to win spicebread at the trade fair that way, as a lad. Show us how a soldier fights, but no killing: if you’re good, we can’t afford to lose you or Cob.”

“All right.” Gird had seen Cob’s sort of wrestler before; he would be strong and quick. But the sergeant had taught his recruits many ways to fight hand-to-hand, and which ones were best against which kind of opponent. Gird watched Cob crouch and come forward in a balanced glide, and grinned to himself.

Although he knew what to do, it had been a long time since he’d done it. He got the right grip on Cob’s arm, and put out his own leg, but his timing was just off, and Cob twisted away before he was thrown. Gird avoided Cob’s attempt at a hold, but the effort threw him off balance and he staggered. Cob launched himself at Gird, knocking him sideways, and threw a leg across him quickly. Gird remembered that—it took a roll, here, and a quick heave there, and suddenly he was on top of Cob. Under him, the man’s muscles were bunched and hard. He was not quitting. Gird did not wait for Cob’s explosion, but rolled backwards suddenly, releasing his grip. Cob bounced up and charged. This time Gird was ready; he took the wrist of the arm Cob punched at him, pivoted, and flung Cob hard over his shoulder onto the ground.

Cob lay blinking, half-stunned. Gird heard something behind him, and whirled in time to catch another charge, even as the blackhaired man said “Triga—no!” Triga’s mad rush required no great skill; Gird used the man’s own momentum to send him flying as well. He landed hard and skidded an armlength when he landed.

Cob whistled, from his place on the ground. “You could’ve made money with that throw, Gird. Teach me?”

Gird looked at the blackhaired man. “Well?”

“Well. You can fight—not many overthrow Cob. I’m sorry about Triga, but glad to see you have no trouble with him. We can use those skills.”

“And the rest?”

The blackhaired man frowned slightly. “I am not the only leader, the Stone Circle is made of many circles, and each has its own. You must convince us all that this is something we need, and can use. I still do not see how sticks and shovels will let us stand against soldiers with sharp steel.”

Gird started to say that he wasn’t sure, but realized that these men didn’t want to hear that. Those eyes fastened on his face wanted certainty, confidence, the right answer. The only answer he was sure of was drill. “You have to start with drill,” he said. He knew they could hear the certainty in his voice about that. “You have to learn to work together, move together. Let me show you.”

“Now?” someone asked, as if it were absurd to start something new so late in the day.

“You can’t start sooner,” said Gird, quoting the old proverb. Several of the men chuckled, but it was a friendly chuckle this time.

“Start with me,” said the blackhaired man. “My name’s Ivis.” He stood and the rest stood also. Cob, cheerful despite his fall, had climbed to his feet, and reached a hand down to Triga.

Gird took a deep breath and tried to remember the expression on his sergeant’s face. “The first thing is, you line up here.” He scratched a line in the dirt with his toe. “You, too, Fori—come on. Pidi, just stay out of the way. Two hands of you here, and two behind, an armslength.” That would make two ranks of ten.

When the front ten had their toes more or less arranged on the line he’d scratched, he looked at them again. They slouched in an uneven line, shoulders hunched or tipped sideways, heads poked forward, knees askew. Triga was rubbing his elbow. Those behind were even more uneven; they had taken his armslength literally, and the short ones stood closer to those in front than the tall ones. This was going to be harder than he’d thought. His boyhood friends had been eager to play soldier.

“Stand up straight,” he said. “Like the soldiers you’ve seen. Heads up—” That sent one of them staggering, as he jerked his head up too far. Someone else chuckled. Ivis growled at them, and they settled again. Gird did not like their expressions: they weren’t taking this seriously at all. Only Fori and Cob and Ivis looked as if they were even trying. “You three—” he said, pointing to them. “You get together here in the middle. And you others—look at them, how they’re standing. Like that is what you need. Feet together, toes out a little. Hands at your sides. You in the back row, make a straight row—” Gradually they shifted and wiggled into something more like military posture. Gird wondered if he had looked like that at first. Maybe this was the best they could do, for now.

“Now you have to learn to march.” He glared, daring anyone to laugh. No one did, but he saw smirks. His old sergeant would have had something to say about that, but he had never dealt with outlaws, either. “You all have to start with the same foot—”

“Like dancing?” asked Cob. Gird stopped, surprised. He’d never thought of it as like dancing, but all the dances required the men to step out with the same foot, or they’d have been tripping each other. He thought his way into the harvest dance he had led so many times. Wrong foot.

“Like dancing,” he said finally, “but not the same foot. The other foot, from the harvest dance.” Surely they all danced it the same way. “Think of the dance, and then pick up the other foot.” Slowly, wavering, one foot after another came up, until they were all teetering on one foot. All but two had the correct foot. Those looked down, saw they were wrong, and changed feet. “Now one step forward.” The double line lurched towards him, out of step and no two steps the same length. Gird felt a twinge of sympathy for his old sergeant. Had it been this difficult? “Straighten out the lines,” he said.

He kept them at it until his voice was tired. By then they could break apart and reassemble in two fairly straight lines, and they could all pick up the same foot at the same time. But when they walked forward, their uneven strides quickly destroyed the lines. He was sure they could have danced it, arms over each others’ shoulders, but they couldn’t fight in that position. He’d told them that, and a few other things, and remembered some of the words his sergeant had used.

They were ready to lounge around, eating their meager supper, but Gird remembered more than his sergeant’s curses.

“We must learn to keep things clean,” he said.

“Clean!” Triga had scowled often; now he sneered. “We’re not lords in a palace. How can we be clean—and why should we?”

“Soldiers keep themselves clean, and their weapons bright. I spent my first days in the guard scrubbing the floor, washing dishes, and scouring buckets. First, it keeps men healthy—you all know that—and protects against fevers. And second, it means that you know your equipment will work. A weapon’s no good if the blade is dull. And third, I stink bad enough to tell any forester there’s a poor man here: so do you all, after the drill. D’you want hounds seeking us? It’s warm enough: we should all bathe.”

Sighing, Ivis and Cob heaved themselves up, and the others followed. Gird led them to the waterfall. Once well wet, the men cheered up and began joking, splashing each other. Pidi had found a clump of soaproot, and sliced off sections with his knife. Soon the creek was splattered with heavy lather.

When Gird felt that the grime and sweat of the past days was finally gone, he washed his clothes as best he could, and saw the bloodstains from Parin and Rahi fade to brownish yellow. The other men watched him, curious, but some of them fetched their own ragged garments and tumbled them in the water. Gird smiled when he saw them laying out the wet clothes on bushes, as he was doing. Diamod brought him a clump of leaves.

“Here—rub this on, and the flies will stay away. Otherwise you’ll be eaten up by the time your things are dry.”

“I should’ve washed clothes first—now it’s near nightfall. But I have a spare shirt.”

“Most of them don’t.”

But even in dirty clothes, the men stank less, and carried themselves less furtively. Gird, with a clean shirt tickling his bare knees, suggested another change in their customs.

“Why not bake a hearthcake on one of these stones? Twouldn’t be bread, exactly, but it would be hot, and cooked—”

“If we had honey we could have honeycakes, an’ we had grain,” said Triga. Gird began to take a real dislike to Triga.

“There’s always bees in a wood,” he said crisply. “And stings to a bee, for all that.”

“There’s none knows how to make the batter, Gird,” said Ivis. “We’ve no mill or flour. All we know is crush the grain and soak it—if you know better, teach us that.”

Gird thought of the millstones left behind—but he could not have carried them and Rahi. He looked at the stones used as seats, and found one with a slightly hollowed surface. Then he went to the creekside, and looked for cobbles. He could feel the other men watching him, as if he were a strange animal, a marvel. But millstones, the cottage millstones, were no different. A hollowed stone, like a bowl, and the grinder. Some people had flatter ones, with a broader grinder. It had to be fine-grained stone, and hard. He picked up several cobbles he liked, and hefted them, felt along their smooth curves with a careful finger. Yes.

Ivis had the grainsack out for him when he returned. Gird wondered if it was grain he’d grown, or someone else’s contribution. It didn’t matter. He dipped a small handful, and poured it onto the stone, then rubbed with the cobble. It wasn’t the right shape—neither the bottom stone nor the grinder—and the half-ground grain wanted to spit out from under and fall off. He worked steadily, ignoring the others, pushing the meal back under the grinder with his finger. He was careful not to lick it, as he would have at home: thin as they all were, they must be keeping famine law, when all the food was shared equally.

When the first handful was ground to a medium meal, he brushed it into a wooden bowl that Ivis had brought. It was not enough to make any sort of bread for all of them, but he could test his memory. Cob brought him a small lump of tallow, and he took a pinch of salt from the saltbag he’d brought himself. Meal, water, fat, salt—not all he liked in his hearthcakes, but better than meal and water alone. He stirred it in the wooden bowl, while the fire crackled and Pidi brushed off the flattest of the stones facing the firepit. The tallow stayed in its lump, stubborn, and Gird remembered that he needed to heat it. He skewered it on a green stick, and held it over the fire, catching the drips in the bowl. Finally it melted off, and he stirred it in quickly. He felt the stone, and remembered that he should have greased it. The stick he’d used for the tallow was greasy now; he rubbed his fingers down it, and then smeared the stone. The stone was hot, but was it hot enough? He poured the batter out. It stiffened almost at once, the edges puckering. Hot enough. With his arm, he waved heat toward it, to cook the upper surface. Mali had had the skill to scoop up the hearthcakes and flip them, but the only times he’d tried it, they’d fallen in the fire.

The smell made his mouth water and his belly clench. He looked up, and saw hungry looks on all the faces. Now the upper side was stiff and dull—dry, and browning. He hoped he’d put enough tallow on the rock, He slid a thin twig under it, and it lifted. He got his fingers on it—hot!—and flipped it to Ivis. Ivis broke it in pieces—each man had a small bite—and then it was gone. But if his fighting had gotten their respect, this had gotten their interest.

“I thought you were a farmer, not a cook,” said Ivis.

“My wife was sick a lot, that last few years.” Gird gestured at the bowl. “May I give my son that?”

Ivis nodded. “Of course. It’s fair; he had none of the hearthcake itself.” Pidi grinned and began cleaning the batter from the bowl with busy fingers and agile tongue. “But tell us—what do we need?”

Gird thought about it. “Millstones—we can use this, but we can’t carry it along, not if the foresters come here. But we can put millstones in another place, if you have a particular place.”

“Where I came from, we all had to use the lord’s mill,” said Ivis.

Gird shrugged. “That was the rule for us, too, but most of us had handmills at home. Always had. The lord’s mill was a day’s journey away—we had no time for that. And then if you did go, you’d have to wait while he ground someone else’s, and might not get your own back. Anyway, we can have millstones for hand milling—it’ll take time, is the main thing. We can’t have bread every day. Tallow, we need, and a bit of honey if it’s available. Salt—I brought some with me, but we’ll need more—”

“There’s a salt lick downstream a bit,” said Cob. “I can show you.”

“And if we want lightbread, we’ll need a starter. Do you ever get milk?”

“D’you think we live in a great town market, where we can buy whatever we like?” asked Triga.

From the tone of the response, others were as tired of Triga’s complaints as Gird was. Gird waited until the others had spoken, then said “No, but I think you’re not so stupid as you act.” Cob grinned. Triga, predictably, scowled. Gird turned back to Ivis. “How long have you lived out here?”

“Me? A hand of years—five long winters. Artha’s been here longer, but most don’t stay that long. They move on, or they die.”

“You’ve done well, on beans and grain.”

“There’s more in the summer. We find herbs, do a little hunting, rob a hive once a year—no one wants to do it more, with all the stings we get. We do get milk sometimes, when we venture in close to a farmstead. Not all of us, o’ course. Milk, cheese, trade honey or herbs for a bit of cloth . . .”

Cloth, in fact, was one of the hardest things to come by. Gird, remembering his mother’s hours at the loom, and the value of each furl, did not wonder at this. To share food was one thing; to share the product of personal skill was another. The outlaws had learned to tan the hides of beasts they hunted—“Stick ’em in an oak stump that’s rotted and got water in it”—but good leather took more than that; many of the hides rotted, or came out too brittle to use for clothing.

As he listened to Ivis and Cob, and thought about all that this group needed, he thought back to his sergeant’s comments about the importance of supply. Soldiers did not grow their own food, or raise their own flocks, or build their own shelters—this, so they could have the time to practice soldiering. But these men would have to do it themselves. Could they do that, and learn to be soldiers as well?

Chapter Ten

The next morning, Gird realized that the others were all looking to him for leadership, and not only in military training.

“Do we work on drill before breakfast, or after?” asked Ivis.

“After,” said Gird, to give himself time. His clothes were still damp; he turned them over and hoped the morning sun would dry them. Then he eyed the trees, and realized it would be a long time before the sun came into the clearing. Breakfast was another cold mess of soaked grain. Gird was already tired of it. He was spoiled, he supposed, by having had a wife and daughter with a parrion for herbs and cooking. Pidi leaned against him as he ate, and Gird put an arm around him. He wished he could have left the boy with Mali’s brother—he was really too young for this. Fori sat on Gird’s other side, carefully not leaning, but clearly nervous among so many strangers.

“Do you have a plan beyond training us?” asked Cob. Gird glanced at Ivis, who seemed interested but not antagonistic.

“When Diamod first came to our village,” Gird said, “he wanted to learn soldiering. Wanted me to teach all of you. I thought he meant you had a plan—whoever your leader was.”

“We’ve tried things,” Ivis said. “And the other groups—I know they have. Captured a guards’ store house, one did, and burned it out, but that brought more guards, and they took prisoners—finally killed them. Robbed a few traders, but that’s—we don’t like to be brigands; that’s not what we’re here for.”

“And that is?”

Diamod leaped into the discussion. “We’ve got to be the peasant’s friend—free the peasants, somehow, from the lords—”

“That won’t happen!” Triga stamped his foot in emphasis. “There’s always been lords and peasants. But if we can make them understand they have to be fair—”

“Now that is what will never happen.” Cob stamped both feet. “Lords be fair indeed! They wouldn’t know how, and why should they? Nay, ’slong as we’ve got the lords over us, they’ll do their best to keep us down, and take every bit they can. Does the farmer leave the sheep half a fleece, or feed a cow and not milk her?”

“A good farmer leaves the beasts alive and healthy,” muttered another man. Gird could tell this was an old argument, comfortable in their mouths as their tongues were. He knew its byways as well, having heard them all in his own village. He cleared his throat, and to his surprise they all quieted and looked at him.

“You have no plan,” he said, as if musing. “One wants to teach the lords how to rule, and another wants to end their rule, and I suppose some of you would like to go and live peacefully far away, if you could.”

“Aye—” More than one voice answered him.

“I used to think,” Gird went on, “that it was best to work hard and live within the lords’ laws. That if a man worked hard enough, honestly enough, everything would be right in the end. That’s what my father taught me, and times I did other than he said, we all suffered for it. I determined to follow his advice, and trust he was right. But I was wrong.” He paused, and looked around. Pidi was trembling a little in the arc of his arm; Fori’s face was set. The others watched him closely, and did not move. “I told you a little—about my daughter and her husband—but not all that led me here. It began long before, and over the years I built a wall of the stones I swallowed—stones of anger and stones of sorrow. A wall to keep myself at peace, and safety within—and it did not work.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, and scrubbed his beard. “I don’t know if any law is fair, but the law the lords put on us is not fair, and no man can live safe under it. I don’t know if all the lords are alike, but some of ’em—Kelaive, for one—are not only greedy, but cruel. They like to hurt people; they like to see people suffer. Such men cannot rule wisely, or fairly. And when such men rule, no one can live an honest life.” He drew a long breath, gave Pidi a squeeze, and then pushed him gently away. He could not say what he was going to say, with his arm around his youngest child.

“I have taken that wall down,” Gird said. “Those stones—those stones I will throw at our enemies. Those stones, which I bring to this circle—because the Lady herself cannot give us peace unless we drive off the alien lords who rule us.”

“But we can’t,” said Triga. “We are too few—”

“Now, in this place, yes: we are too few. But there are more farmers than lords, more servants than lords. Few have joined you, as I did not join you, because they too think we are too few. They do not wish more trouble than they have. But if we can show success, they will come. I’m sure of it.”

“Yes!” Cob stamped his feet again. “Yes, you’re right. Gird’s right,” he said to the others. Most were nodding, smiling, clearly pleased with what Gird had said. And Gird, putting his arm around Pidi again, wondered if he could possibly perform what they were sure he had promised.

Serious planning began after a short review of yesterday’s drill. He had realized that the clearing was really too small and too cluttered for serious drill; he could not march his two lines of ten five steps without someone having to step over or around a log or stone. And in the noise they made while drilling, a squad of mounted guards could have ridden up on them without anyone noticing.

“Do you have anyone out looking for foresters?” he asked Ivis.

“Usually someone goes downstream, and someone goes upstream,” Ivis scratched his jaw and looked thoughtful. “We use stone clicks for signals. But today everyone wanted to hear what you said.” In other words, Gird thought, just when it was most dangerous, they had no guard set. That would have to change.

“What about at night?”

“No, no one goes out at night. The foresters don’t travel at night.”

“But—” He wondered how far to go. Would Ivis be angry? It had to be said. “At night, you could see the glow of their fire—smell smoke or cooking food—and be warned.”

“I suppose.” Ivis didn’t look eager to wander the forest at night; Gird could understand that. But Diamod had seemed to like sneaking about the village—maybe he could. He glanced at Diamod, who smiled brightly. He still did not understand Diamod, and he wondered if he ever would. The other men seemed to feel the way he felt—would have felt, if he’d left home under any other circumstances, he reminded himself. They were here because they had to be. But Diamod seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Someone should go out now, and be sure no foresters are coming,” he said to Ivis. Ivis nodded, but did nothing. “Who will you send?” Gird asked.

“Me? But you’re—”

“Do you want me to take over as leader? Is that what you’re saying?”

Ivis sat silent a long moment, his face somber. Then he looked Gird in the face. “I haven’t done much,” he said. “Just tried to keep them together—talk to farmers about food—but I don’t feel like a leader. I never did. They started listening to me after Rual died, but I never wanted it. They’re used to me, but you’ll do better.”

“It’s not something you and I should decide,” Gird said, almost before he thought it. “If this is about fairness, and ruling fairly, then they should have a say.”

“Triga will quarrel,” said Ivis. Gird shrugged.

“Let him quarrel. He won’t do more; he didn’t like landing on the ground.” He looked around at the others, now lounging around the clearing in the attitudes of men trying to hear a private conversation without seeming to listen. “Ivis and I were talking,” he began, not raising his voice. They edged closer. “He asked me if I wanted to be leader.”

“You! We don’t even know you,” Triga said. Predictable, Gird thought. He’s so predictable.

“Quiet now—you can argue later.” He put a bite into his voice, and Triga subsided. The others were attentive; he could not tell if they approved or not. “Ivis—do you want to tell them what you said to me?”

Ivis swallowed, gulped, and finally repeated most of what he’d said. “I think he’d be a good leader,” he finished. “He’s strong, and he has a plan. And he knows more than just soldiering. I’d rather follow him.”

“And I,” said Cob quickly, giving Gird a wide grin. “I want to learn how to fight like that.”

“Yes,” said some of the others, and “Gird—let’s have Gird.” Triga was obstinately silent until everyone else had spoken. They all looked at him, and he turned red.

“Come on, Trig,” said Cob. “You know you want to—it’s just your stubbornness.”

“What if he’s a spy?” Triga said. “How do we know he isn’t a guard in disguise?”

“I’m not that stupid!” Diamod glared at him. “I was in his village: I met his friends. They told me a lot—” He gave Gird a long look, steady and measuring. “A lot about his past. They couldn’t all have been lying. He’s a farmer and a farmer’s son, and if you think he’s not, you can argue it with me. Knife to knife.”

“Enough,” Gird said. “We can’t be spilling each other’s blood over little quarrels, if we want to fight a war. Triga, d’you think Diamod’s lying?”

“No.” It was a sulky no.

“Do you think I am? I’ll have no one in my army that thinks I’m a liar.” He felt ridiculous, speaking of an army when what he had was twenty ragged, hungry, untrained men and one boy, but he saw the others straighten a little. If coward was a word to make men flinch and bend, maybe army was a word to straighten their backs and make them proud. He saw Triga’s face change, as he realized that he might actually be thrown out of the group. Fear and anger contended; fear won.

“No—I don’t think you’re lying.” Slightly less sulky, and somewhat worried.

“These others agreed to have me as their leader—do you?” He kept his eyes locked on Triga’s; he could feel the struggle in the man.

“I suppose. For awhile. We can see.” Cob and Diamod looked angry, but Gird shook his head.

“That’s fair. You don’t completely trust me, but you’re willing to give me a chance.” Triga’s jaw dropped in surprise; he had been braced for an argument. Gird looked around at the others. “I told Ivis I would not take the leadership on his word alone. You have all chosen, as you have a right to do—and I thank Triga for trusting as far as he can. None of us can do more than that.”

The others sat back, their expressions ranging from puzzled to satisfied. Triga said nothing, but looked as if he were chewing on a new idea.

“Now, we need to send out watchers, to let us know if anyone comes. Ivis says you usually had two; I’d like to send four—two of you, and my son Pidi and my nephew Fori. They need to learn the forest.”

“It’s my turn,” said Ivis. “And Kelin—” Kelin was a slight brownhaired man with one shoulder higher than the other. He did not quite limp when he walked, but his stride was uneven. Gird nodded.

“Pidi knows many useful herbs,” he said. “My daughter taught him.”

Kelin grinned. “Then let him come with me: all I know is flybane and firetouch. And sometimes I miss firetouch until I’m already itching.”

“Three pairs of clicks,” said Ivis, as they left. “That’s the danger signal. You pass it on, whichever way it comes, and move away from it. Cob knows the trails.”

When they had gone, Gird surveyed the clearing itself. If they had to leave it untouched, so that foresters who used it would not know they’d been there, he could not move the logs and stones used for seating to give more room for drill. They really needed a campsite the foresters did not use. This one could become a trap, particularly if his people became effective against the lords. So what did he need in a campsite? He thought about that as he roamed the clearing, pacing off distances, and trying to listen for clicks.

Water. Good drainage, and room for the jacks trenches he would have them dig; the disgusting stench just behind a trio of cedars was entirely too obvious. Level ground, uncumbered, for drill, but enough trees for cover. A cave would be nice, shelter from weather and a place to store food and equipment. While he was asking, why not a forge with a skilled smith? He remembered that Diamod had said one of the men had been a smith, a one-armed man—there he was. His name was odd, a smithish name: Ketik.

“Ketik—”

“Aye.” He had a rough voice, and stood canted a little sideways, as if missing the weight of his arm. The stump was ugly, a twisted purple lump of scar. He wore no shirt, only a sleeveless leather jerkin.

“If we found another campsite, what would we need for a forge?”

Ketik stared at him out of light-blue eyes. “A forge? Don’t you see this arm? I’m no smith now.”

“If we had what is needed, couldn’t you take an apprentice? Teach someone?”

Ketik snorted, a sound half-laughter, half-anger. “Could you teach someone to swing a scythe by telling them? Wouldn’t you have to show them? Do you think smithery is so simple?”

“Not simple at all,” said Gird quietly. “It is a great—mystery, and our village had no smith at all. We shared one with Hardshallows. But we will need a smith—”

“And not all are weapons smiths,” Ketik said.

“I know. What I’m thinking of wouldn’t take a swordsmith. But we would have to have our own forge.”

“A good fireplace,” Ketik said rapidly. “Fuel—fireoak is best. Someone to make charcoal, because you’d need to be able to refine ores sometimes. Leather for the bellows, and not the rotting, stiff mess these idiots make in old tree stumps. Real leather, properly tanned. Tools, which means iron: ore or lump iron from some smelter. Both are illegal. An anvil. Someplace with water, too, and a way to disguise the smoke. Satisfied?”

“We will need to move anyway,” Gird said. “We might as well look for what we need.”

“What we need is the gods’ blessing and a fistful of miracles,” said Ketik. He sounded slightly less irritated now, as if challenging Gird had eased his mind.

“You’re right,” Gird said. “But though we need Alyanya’s blessing for a good harvest, we still have to plow and plant and weed and reap.”

Ketik laughed aloud. “Well—you may be the leader we need after all. I never heard of a one-armed smith teaching smithery, but then I never heard of a farmer teaching soldiering, either.”

Triga had come close while they were talking; now he said, “I said last autumn we should find a new campsite.”

Gird nodded, ignoring the rancorous tone. “Did you find someplace you thought would be good?”

“Me?” Triga looked surprised. “They wouldn’t listen to me.”

“If you already know a place—”

“I know another place than this, but it might not be what you want.”

“How far is it?”

“A half-day, maybe, or a little longer.” He pointed across the stream. “Sunrising. It’s swampy; the foresters never go there.”

Gird opened his mouth to say that the last thing they needed was a swamp, and closed it again. If Triga was trying to be helpful, why stop him, “I think we’ll need more than one place, but that sounds useful. If we’re pursued—”

“It’s like a moat, I thought,” said Triga.

“As long as we have a bridge over it—one they can’t see.”

“Gird—about the grain—do you want us to grind more today?” That was Herf, who had been tending the fire when Gird awoke. Triga looked sulky and opened his mouth; Gird shook his head. “Triga, tomorrow or the next day I’d like to see your swamp. Right now, though, the grain comes first.”

Triga said “I could go look for a path through the swamp.”

“Good idea.” Gird had never seen a swamp, and had no idea what one would look like. Were they flat? Sloped? Did they have high places that were dry? “If you find a dry place inside it,” he said slowly, “like the castle inside the moat—?”

“I’ll look.” Triga actually seemed cheerful—for him—as he waded across the stream and turned to wave back at them. Gird shook his head and turned to Herf.

“Now. How much grain do we have?”

When Herf showed him their meager food stores, and the way they were kept, Gird could hardly believe the band had not starved long ago. Sacks of grain and dry beans were sitting on damp stone under a rainroof made of small cedars with their tops tied together. Gird prodded the bottom of the sacks and felt the telltale firmness of grain rotted into a solid mass. Beans had begun to sprout through the coarse sacking. Herf had tried to store onions and redroots in a trench, but most of them were sprouting.

“I know,” he said in answer to Gird’s look. “Once they sprout, the redroots are poisonous. But I couldn’t dig them in any deeper here, without proper tools. The ground’s stony.”

“Well.” Gird squatted beside the trench, and brushed the leaf-mold off a healthy redroot sprout. “My da used to tell about his granda’s da—or somewhat back there—about the time before the lords came, when our folk grew things in the woods.”

“In the woods?”

“In fields, too, the grain—of course. But redroots and onions and such—some we don’t grow now—along the streams, and in the woods. We can’t eat these—maybe we should plant them now, and harvest in the fall.”

“We can still eat the onions—”

“Some of them, yes. But why not plant the others? Spread ’em around in the wood—no one’d recognize them as plantings, and they’d be where we knew—”

Herf frowned, thinking hard. “Then—we could grow the greenleaves, too, couldn’t we? Cabbages, sorli—”

“Maybe even sugarroot.” Gird poked at the leafmold. “This here’s good growing soil for some crops. Herbs, greenleaves—grow ’em along the creekbank, we could. You know how hard it is to haul water to the greenstuff in summer—we could plant it where it needs no help.”

“Aye, but breadgrain and beans—we can’t live on greenstuff and redroots alone.”

“Right enough for now—you get your grain from farmers, right?”

“Or steal it from traders—but that’s rare.”

“When we take it from farmers, they go hungry—so we can’t afford to let any rot—”

“It’s the best I could do!” Herf puffed up almost like a frog calling.

“I’m not saying it wasn’t. But if we find a new campsite, maybe we can do better. Besides—did you ever see the big jars the lords use?”

“Jars?”

“Aye. Brown, shiny on inside and outside. Like our honeypots but bigger. They’re almighty heavy and hard to move, but grain and even meal stay dry inside them.”

“And where would we get such? We don’t have a potter.”

Another miracle to wish for, thought Gird. They needed some pots—at least small ones. In his mind’s eye, his future campsite had sprouted another fireplace, although it wavered as he looked at it. He’d never seen a potter’s workshop. He knew they had a special name for the hearth in which they cooked their pots, but not what it looked like. But he could see as clearly as if he stood there the kitchen of the guard barracks at Kelaive’s manor, with the great jars of meal and beans, the huge cooking kettles, the shiny buckets, the longhandled forks and spoons, the rack of knives. If he was going to have an army, he would have to have a kitchen capable of feeding it—and storerooms—his head ached, and he shook it. What he had was a sack and a half of grain, some of it rotted, less than a sack of beans, a few sprouting onions, and redroots that might be edible in half a year. An open firepit, two or three wooden bowls, the men’s belt knives. He sighed, heavily, and heaved himself up.

“All right. We’ll grind some of that grain, and make hearthcakes tonight. But we’re going to need more grain, and I know the villages are short right now. Some of the men hunt, don’t they? How often do they bring anything back?”

“Not that often. There are only two bows, not very good ones, and the arrows—”

“Are as bad. I can guess that. Anyone who can use a sling, or set snares?”

Herf shook his head. Gird added those skills to the list in his head, and told himself not to sigh again. It would do no good. He wished he hadn’t sent Fori off; the lad had a talent for setting snares, and had once taken a squirrel with his sling. Come to think of it, slings could be weapons too.

“All right.” He raised his voice. “Come here a bit, all of you. There are some things need doing.” The men came closer, curious. “If we’re going to be an army,” he said, “we have to organize like soldiers. Food, tools, clothing—all that. We’re starting with what we have. The first thing is to get all the rotten grain and beans apart from what’s good, and protect the good from the wet. Then we’re going to plant the sprouted redroots, scattered along our trails, so that we’ll have them next fall. They’ll get bigger, you know, and double or triple for us. Who here has used a handmill?” That was usually women’s work, although many men helped grind the grain. Two hands raised. Gird nodded at them. “Herf will give you the grain—you saw how I did it yesterday. We’re making enough hearthcakes for everyone tonight. Unless the foresters show up, of course.”

By midday, all the clothes washed the previous evening were dry. Gird pulled on his trousers happily; he did not feel himself with his bare legs hanging out. The two volunteer millers had produced almost a bowlful of meal, and Herf had used Gird’s clean shirt to hold the little good grain in one sack while he scraped out the spoiled and turned the sack inside out. The bottom end was beginning to rot. Without Gird having to suggest it, Herf decided to rip out the stitching there and sew the top end shut, so the weakest material would be at the opening. Since he seemed to know how to use a long thorn and a bit of twine to do it, Gird left him alone. Two other men had gone out in both directions along the creek, with the sprouted redroots, and were planting them. Gird reminded them that there was no good reason to plant them close to that campsite, since they would be moving somewhere else.

Fori appeared unexpectedly in midafternoon with a pair of squirrels he’d knocked down, showing off to Ivis with his sling. He had skinned and gutted them already, and had the skins stretched on circles of green wood. Gird grinned at him, delighted. But two squirrels would hardly feed twenty hungry men—they had no soup kettle.

Herf had the answer to that, showing Gird how hot rocks dropped in a wooden bowl could make the water hot enough to cook without burning holes in the bowl. By this time, he had all the good grain in one sack, and the dry beans separated from the damp, sprouting ones. Gird had wondered if they could also grow beans in the wood, but beans liked a lot of sun. Reluctantly, he had buried the smelly remnants of spoiled grain and beans. Now Gird sliced up onions, his eyes watering and burning, to go in with the squirrels and one dry, wrinkled, unsprouted redroot. Herf added the beans he’d put on to soak that morning.

The guards came back in the dusk to the smell of roasting hearthcakes and squirrel and bean stew. Gird had already found another, besides Diamod, who would be willing to stand night guard; these two had eaten, and when Ivis and Kelin returned with Pidi, the night guards went out. Gird had also drilled the others, in the afternoon, and insisted on their cleaning up. He was pleased to notice that Ivis and Kelin stopped to wash hands and face in the creek before approaching the fire.

They had only three bowls to eat from; these passed from one to another, along with the two spoons. But compared to the night before, it was a festive meal. Even Triga made no complaint. Ivis came to sit by Gird, and said, “I made the right choice.”

“It won’t always be like this,” Gird said, thinking of all the things he had to do. “We were lucky that Fori got those squirrels.”

“But it feels different.” Ivis wiped his mouth with his tattered sleeve and grinned, teeth bright in the firelight. “You know what to do.”

Across the fire, Fori was basking in the praise of older men; Pidi was showing Herf the herbs he had brought back in his shirt. They were feeling at home here; Gird wondered if the young adjusted more easily. He was not sure what he felt. The blinding pain when he thought of Rahi was still there; when it hit, he found himself turning in the direction of Fireoak, willing himself across the woods and fields between to be with her. She might be dead by now, or still struggling in fever. He could not know.

He was beginning to know the men around him, and already knew that several of them would have been friends if they’d grown up in the same village. Cob reminded him of Amis, with his matter-of-fact friendliness. Ivis was more like Teris—responsibility made him truculent, but once freed of it, he was amiable and mild-tempered. Gird told himself that these were mostly farmers—men like those he’d known all his life—and in time would be as familiar as the men of his village, but for the moment he could not quite relax into kinship with them.

That night before he dropped off to sleep, he made an effort to speak individually with each of them, to fix their faces and names in his mind. Then he burrowed into a drift of leaves, with Pidi snuggled close to his side. It was still hard to sleep, in the open, knowing he had no cottage to return to, but he was tired, and the strain of the past few days overcame him.

The next morning brought complications. Instead of cool spring sunshine, the sky was cloudy, and a fine misty drizzle began to penetrate their clothes. The foul stench of their ill-dug jacks oozed across the clearing. Gird was sure they could smell it in the next village, wherever that was. He wrapped his leather raincloak around the sacks of grain and beans. The night guards arrived back at camp hungry, while Herf was struggling with the fire. Smoke lay close to the ground, making them all cough. After the previous night’s feast, plain soaked grain seemed even more dismal than usual. Gird’s joints ached; he wished fervently for a mug of hot sib. He heard low grumbles and mutters, and Triga’s voice raised in a self-pitying whine.

This would never do. Gird strode back into the center of the clearing as if the sun were shining and he knew exactly what to do. The men looked up at him, sour-faced.

“Triga, what did you find yesterday?” Triga, interrupted in mid-complaint, looked almost comical. Then he stood up.

“I found that swamp I told you about—” Someone groaned, and Triga whipped around to glare in that direction.

“Never mind,” said Gird. “Go on—and you others listen.”

“I walked all around it—that’s why I came back so late. There’s three little creeks goes into it, and two comes out. I don’t know what the middle’s like yet—there wasn’t time—”

“Good. That’s where we’ll go today.”

“All of us?” Herf asked. “It’s raining.”

“It’s raining here, too,” Gird pointed out. “You’ll get just as wet sitting here complaining about the rain, as walking along learning something useful. Maybe we’ll find a cave, and can sleep dry.”

They didn’t look as if they believed him, but one by one his fledgling army stood up. He grinned at them.

“But first,” he said. “We’re going to do something about that.” And he pointed toward the jacks. “It stinks enough to let anyone know a lot of men have been here, and it’s making us sick as well.”

“We don’t have no tools,” someone said. Kef, that was the name. Gird grinned again.

“I brought a shovel, remember? I’ll start the digging, but we’ll all be doing some—because there’s more to it than just shoveling.”

He had spotted a better site the day before. Now he took his shovel and tried it. Here a long-gone flood had spread across the clearing below the waterfall, and left a drift of lighter soil, almost sand. He started the trench he wanted, and gave the shovel to Kef. “That deep, and straight along there,” he said. They really needed a bucket, too, but they didn’t have one. He’d have to use the wooden bowls for the ashes. The men watched as he scooped ashes and bits of charred wood from the side of the firepit into one of their bowls. “You, too,” Gird said, pointing at the other bowls. “We’re going to need a lot of ashes.”

“But I though ashes only worked in a pit,” said Ivis.

“Best in a pit. But a trench is like a little pit. Ashes on top, then dirt, after you use it.”

“Every time?”

“Every time—or it won’t work. The guards kept a pot of ashes in the jacks; I started doing that at our cottage later, and ours smelled less than most.” He looked at them, noticing the squeamish faces. “The worst part,” he said carefully, “is going to be burying what’s already there.” He was pleased to note that no one asked if they had to.

It took longer than he’d hoped, with only the one shovel and small bowls to carry ashes, but at last they had the worst of the noisome mess buried, strewn with ashes, and a new bit of clean trench for that morning’s use. Gird covered it up himself when they were all done, and marked the end with a roughly cut stake poked in the ground.

“Now we clean up,” Gird said, “and then we go look for Triga’s swamp. He’s right—if we can find a safe way into it, that the foresters and guards don’t know, it could be a very handy place.”

Chapter Eleven

Triga led the way, with Gird behind him, and then the others. Gird had asked Ivis to be the rear guard, staying just in sight of the others. Within the first half-league, he was wondering how this group had survived undetected so long. They talked freely, tapped their sticks against trees and rocks as they passed, made no effort to walk quietly. Finally Gird halted them.

“We’re making more noise than a tavern full of drunks. If there’s a forester in the wood anywhere, he’s bound to hear us.”

Ivis turned a dull red. “Well—Gird—we don’t like to come on ’em in surprise, like—”

“The foresters? You mean they know—”

“It’s sort of—well—they’d have to know, wouldn’t they? Being as they have to know the whole wood. But what they don’t actually see they don’t have to take notice of. My brother’s one of them, you see, and—”

“And on the strength of one brother, you trust them all? What about the guard?”

“Oh, the duke’s guard is a very different matter—very different indeed. But they don’t venture into the wood except when the duke’s hunting. And then they’re guarding him, not poking about on their own.”

“And—duke? Your lord isn’t Kelaive?”

“Gods, no! I’ve heard about him, even before you came. Our duke’s Kelaive’s overlord, just as the king is his.”

“So the foresters of this wood know that a band of outlaws lives here, and expects you to make enough noise coming so they can avoid you. What if they change their minds? Surely your duke’s offered a reward”

“My brother wouldn’t take a reward for me,” Ivis said earnestly. “And if he captures the others, there I’d be, right in the middle.”

“What if he’s transferred, or killed, or one of the other foresters gets greedy?” Ivis said nothing in answer; from his expression, he had thought of this before and tried to forget it. Gird looked at all the others. “Listen to me: an army does not go about expecting its enemies to get out of the way. We can’t fight like that. Cannot. Perhaps Ivis’s brother has enough influence on the foresters of this wood, but we will not always be in this wood. We have to leave it someday, and you must know how to move quietly. And we must be alert—we must find the foresters before they find us, and never let them know we were near. Understand?” Heads nodded, some slowly. “Now—the first thing—no talking while we march. No banging on stones or tree limbs. Walk one behind the other, far enough that if one man stumbles, the others don’t fall too. Triga, you should be far enough ahead that I can just see, and you shouldn’t be able to hear us—you listen for anyone else. If you go too fast, I’ll click pebbles twice; if I click three times, stop. You give two double clicks if you hear foresters. Ivis, if you hear anything behind us, give two double clicks. The rest of you—if you hear two double clicks, stop where you are and do not make a noise. Clear?”

Again, heads nodded. Gird hoped that there were no foresters out that day, so they could get in at least one practice before it was needed. He waved Triga ahead, waited until he was almost out of sight on the narrow trail, and started off himself. Behind him, the noise of the others was much less, although he could hear an occasional footfall. Triga led them fairly quickly, and Gird had a time keeping him in sight and avoiding obvious noisemakers. But his followers grew even quieter, as if they were listening for themselves, and learning from their own noise how to lessen it.

The double-click he had been half-waiting for startled him when it came. The others had frozen in place; Gird took a final step and a stick broke under his foot. He grimaced, and looked back along the line. Cob, behind him, grinned, wagged his head, and made the shame sign with his fingers. Gird shrugged and spread his hands. When he looked ahead, Triga had stopped just in sight. Gird could hear nothing now but the blood rushing in his own ears, and the faint trickle of water somewhere nearby.

The click had come from behind him, and now he saw a stirring in the line, silent movement as one man leaned to another and mouthed something. Gingerly, Gird took a step back toward Cob, placing his feet carefully on soggy leaves and moss. Cob leaned back to get the message, then forward to Gird.

“Ivis. Said we were a lot quieter, but should practice stopping. He may do it again.”

Gird wished he’d thought of suggesting it, but at the same time wanted to clobber Ivis. His heart was still racing at the thought of being caught by foresters. He nodded, instead, and murmured “Tell him not too many—we have a long way to go.” Cob nodded, and passed the message back. Gird waited what he thought was long enough for it to reach Ivis, then waved Triga on, and started again himself. He almost trod on the same stick, but managed to stretch his stride and avoid it.

Triga’s swamp, when they came to it, appeared first as softer mud in the trail, and then a skim of sib-colored water gleaming between the leaves of some low-growing plant with tiny pink flowers. Ahead was an opening in the forest, with tussocks of grass growing out of the water.

“We have to turn here, if we’re going around it,” said Triga softly to Gird. The others had come up, but were squatting silently in the dripping undergrowth on the dryest patches they could find.

“Have you ever been out in it?”

“When I was a lad, once. There’s someplace out there with plum trees; I could smell the flowers.”

Gird sniffed. It was just past blooming time for the plums in his village, but wild plums came both earlier and later. He didn’t smell any.

“Did you find the trees?”

“Finally—after I got wet to the thighs, and then when I got home my da beat me proper for running off from the goats—but there’s a dry hummock somewhere, with plums.”

“Right out in the middle, I’ll bet,” said Cob. “O’ course, we’re already wet.”

“There used to be a path partway in,” said Triga. “Follow me and step just where I do.” And with that he was off again. The others fell into line.

Triga’s way led alongside the bog, and finally came close enough so that Gird could see how big it was. Despite the drizzle and fog, he could just make out the forest on the other side, a dark massive shadow. In the bog itself were islands crowned with low trees tangled into thick mats. After a short time, Triga came out from under the trees, and stepped onto one of the tussocks. It trembled, but held him up as he took two steps and hopped to another. Gird looked at it distrustfully. How deep was that dark water? And what was under it?

“One at a time,” he said, and reached a leg across to the black footprint Triga had left. He didn’t like the way his foot sank in, and stepped quickly to the gap between tussocks. The mud sucked at his feet, and let go with a little plop. Across the gap, and onto another tussock. Now he was out in the open, where anyone could see him—anyone sitting snug under the forest edge, for instance. His neck prickled. One of Triga’s footprints had a finger of murky water in it; when Gird stepped there, his foot sank to the ankle.

“I don’t like this,” said someone behind him, and someone else said “Shhh!” Their feet squelched on the wet ground, and Gird cursed silently as icy water oozed through his boot.

Only six of them had started into the bog, when the first foothold gave way and Herf found himself hip deep in cold, gluey muck. He yelped; three gray birds Gird had not noticed fled into the air with noisy flapping wings and wild screeches. Triga stopped and looked back, grinning. Gird said “Wait!” as softly as he thought Triga would hear.

They could not explain what happened without talking; Gird sweated, but endured the noise as best he could, while they established that yes, Herf had stepped carefully in the now-sinking footprint, and yes, all the footprints had been getting wetter, and no, it was clear that nobody else could make it. Herf, sprawled across the tussock with one leg stuck in the mud, was grimly silent.

“All right,” Gird said finally. “First we get Herf out, and back on solid ground. Then all of you in the forest start circling the bog, and looking for other ways in. Don’t get stuck.”

“Don’t walk on moss,” Triga added. “It looks solid, but it won’t hold you up.”

“We can’t come back the way we came in,” Gird went on. “So Triga will have to find us a way across. And now we know that a group trying to follow us would bog down—”

“Although the tracks are easy to see,” said Cob.

“Right. If we use this, we need a way in that we can all take, and that they can’t see.”

Getting Herf loose was no easy matter, and involved five men getting themselves wetter and muckier than they had intended. Two more got stuck, although not as badly.

In the meantime, Gird and the others perched on tussocks noticed that water was creeping up around their feet. “We have to keep moving,” Triga said, unnecessarily, and went on, aiming for one of the brush-covered islands. By the time all of them had made it there, to crouch under the thick tangle of limbs and new leaves, they were mud to the knees and breathless.

“I didn’t know it would be worse with more than one,” said Triga. Gird accepted that as an apology, and nodded. At least some of the little trees were plums, tiny fruits just swelling on the ends of their stems. Water dripped on him, sending an icy trickle down the back of his neck and along his spine. He hoped his raincape was keeping the grain and beans dry. If he had to be wet and cold, it should be for a good purpose.

“We’d better go on,” he said. “And if there’s a way for each of us to pick his way safely—that might be better than stepping in your tracks.”

“It’s that kind of grass.” Triga showed them again. “Not that other, with the thinner blades; it grows on half-sunk moss, and you can go right through. This stuff is usually half-solid, but you have to keep moving. Try to pick your way several tussocks ahead, so you don’t have to stop except at places where trees grow. All those are safe. I think.”

“Look at this,” Cob said. He pointed to a delicate purple flower on a thin stalk. “I never saw anything like that.”

“They grow in bogs,” Triga said. “A little later, the whole bog will be pink with a different flower—the same kind, but larger. The purple ones grow only on the islands.”

Gird looked at him. This sounded less and less like the knowledge gained on one clandestine visit as a child. Triga reddened.

“No one could find me here,” he said. “I used to come here a lot, before I left home.”

“And not after?”

“The others didn’t want to see a swamp, they said.”

“Well, we’re seeing it now. What else do you know about it?”

Triga began to lead them across the little island to the bog on the far side. “There aren’t many fish, for all this water. Lots of frogs, though, and little slick things like lizards, but wet. Birds—different kinds you don’t see anywhere else. Some of them swim in the bits of open water, and dive. Most of them wade, and eat frogs and flies. Flowers. One island has a wild apple grove, and one has the best brambleberries I’ve ever eaten. Wild animals: something like a levet that swims, long and sleek, and levets, of course. Rabbits sometimes—I’ve surprised them grazing the grass on the islands. Deer come to the edge to drink and once I saw one where the apples grow. They jump very fast and carefully.”

They began to cross to the next island, this time picking individual ways, with much lurching and staggering. But no one fell in the mud, and they all arrived safely and somewhat drier, but for the rain. This island had fewer trees, and starry blue flowers as well as the tall purple ones.

“In midwinter,” Triga said, as if someone had asked, “the bog may freeze on top, but you still can’t trust the moss. If the ice is thick enough to walk on, then it’s safe, but not otherwise. Most years it freezes that hard after Midwinter. But the thaw comes early—I don’t know why—and I’ve put a leg through the ice more than once.”

This time they did not pause, but went on across the island and back onto the bog. Gird lurched and barely kept himself from falling into the muck.

“I’m thinking this might make a better farm than a castle,” he said.

“Farm?” Triga glanced back at him, teetered, and regained his balance.

“Plums, apples, brambleberries, all guarded by this muck. I’d wager that in full summer the flies are fierce.”

“So they are. The worst of them aren’t out yet, the big deerflies.”

“Onions would grow on the edges; redroots on the islands.”

“Some of these grasses have edible seeds,” Triga said. “My mother’s father, he showed me some of ’em. As much grain as wheat, almost. That’s what the birds come for, the swimmers.”

Gird was about to ask how the swimmers could find space to swim, when they came to a stretch of open water. Under the dark sky, with the drizzle falling, it was impossible to tell how deep it was. “Now what?”

“We’ve gone too far down. Turn up this way, upstream.”

Gird could not see any movement in the water; it lay blank and still, dimpled like hammered pewter by the falling rain. Grunting, he followed Triga to the right, trying to pick his way. Eventually that space of water narrowed, and narrowed again, until he could leap across to a tussock that lurched under him. He grabbed the tallest stalks, and managed not to fall. Something hit the water with a loud plop behind him; he broke into a sweat again.

“Frog,” said Triga. “Big one—he’d be a good dinner.”

“You eat frogs?”

“What’s wrong with that? They’re good.”

Gird shuddered, and tried to hide it. That was the explanation for Triga’s attitude, he was sure. Anyone who would eat frogs would naturally be quarrelsome and difficult. “They’re . . . cold. Slimy.” He remembered very well the little well-frog he’d caught as a boy: the slickness, the smell, the great gold eyes that looked so impossible. His father had shown him frogspawn down in the creek, and he’d prodded it with a curious finger. It had felt disgusting.

Triga shrugged, looking sulky again. “It’s better than going hungry. Food’s food.” He gave Gird a challenging look. “I ate snakes, too.” Gird’s belly turned. What could you say to someone who ate snakes and frogs?

“You eat fish, don’t you?” asked Triga, pursuing this subject with vigor.

“I had a fish once.” Gird remembered the bite or two of fish that he had eaten on his one trip to the trade fair as a youth. They had bought a fish, all of them together, and tried to cook it over their open fire. He could barely remember how it had tasted, though the smell was clear enough. It hadn’t been as filling as mutton. He met Triga’s expression with a grin. “The fish in our creek were about a finger long—the little boys caught them, but no one ate them.”

From the looks on the others’ faces, Triga’s revelations about fish, frogs, and snakes were explaining his behavior to them as well. As if he’d realized that, he led them on faster, landing with juicy splashes on his chosen tussocks. Gird followed at his own pace, carefully. Snakes, too. There might be snakes out here, worse snakes than the striped snakes that wove through the stems of the grain, or the speckled snakes by the creek. He wanted to ask Triga how big the snakes in the bog could be, but he didn’t want to admit he didn’t know. Did they swim?

A sweet perfume broke through his concern about snakes, and he realized they were almost to an island whose scrubby gnarled trees were covered with palepink blossoms. Apples. Gird drank in the delicious scent, so different from the rank sourness of the bog itself, or the faintly bitter scent of the purple flowers. He climbed onto the rounded hump of solid ground with relief. Triga had thrown himself flat on dripping grass, and seemed back in a good humor; he smiled as Gird and the others crawled under low, snagging limbs to join him.

“This was always my favorite,” he said. “Wild apples here, and crabs at the far end, two of them.”

Gird crouched beside him. “What I don’t understand is what made the islands. Why isn’t the bog all bog?”

Triga shrugged. “I don’t know. The way each island has its own trees and flowers, it’s almost like a garden—as if someone planted them that way. But who or why I have no idea.”

“Are any of the islands large enough for a camp?”

“No—probably not. I thought so, but now I see just six of us on one of them, I realize they’re too small. The biggest has nut trees—not as tall as most nut trees—that would give good cover around the edge. But I think even twenty of us would crowd it. Certainly if you’re going to be finicky about the jacks. Out here I always perched over open water.”

The drizzle had stopped, but the apple limbs still dripped cold water on them. Gird looked out between the twisted trunks and caught a gleam of brighter light glinting from water and wet grass. It reminded him of something. He sat quiet, letting the memory come . . . he’d been crouched under another thicket, another time . . . dawn, it was . . . and the shadow had come, the thing that claimed kinship with the elder singers, but claimed also to be different. Kuaknom, it had been. Gird looked across the wet and dripping bog, now slicked with silver as the sun broke through for a moment. There across the uneven wet mat of moss and grass was an island, its trees like miniatures of the forest, bright flowers shining along its shore.

“I know who planted this,” he said. It had come to him, with the beauty of the moment, the glittering, brilliant colors outlined in silver light.

“Who?” asked Triga.

“The singers. The old ones.” He shivered as he said it. Was it bad luck to name them? Would it bring the ill-wishers here?

“You know them?” asked Triga, sitting bolt upright.

“No . . . no, but I know the tales. And I met one of their—the ones that went wrong, the kuaknomi.”

“Gods take the bane!” Triga flicked his fingers twice, throwing the name away. “Don’t speak of them!”

“But the others. I know they did. A garden, you said, each island like its own bed of flowers or fruit. I don’t really like it, Triga, but it’s very beautiful.”

“Even the frogs?”

“Even the frogs.”

The sun vanished again behind low clouds, and by the time they reached the far side of the bog, a light rain was falling. Cob scraped the muck from his worn boots with a handful of moss.

“I never thought I’d be so glad to find a muddy trail in a forest,” he said. “And now we have to walk all the way back around to get home.”

Gird gave him a warning look, and he was quiet. They all were, listening to the many sounds of the rain, the almost musical tinkling of the drops of water in the bog, the soft rush of it in the leaves overhead, the plips and plops of larger drops falling to the forest floor. Where, Gird wondered, was the rest of his troop?

Rock clicked on rock somewhere in the wet distance. One click. What was that? Gird peered around, seeing nothing but wet leaves and treetrunks. His heart began to pound heavily. He blinked rain off his eyelashes, and wished fervently that he’d let the damned grain rot, and taken his leather cape along. Then at least he wouldn’t have rain crawling through his hair, trickling down his neck. He didn’t mind arms and legs; he was used to being wet—but not his head. From the expressions the others had, none of them liked it. Hats, he thought to himself. We have to make hats, somehow. Every summer the women had plaited grass hats that lasted the season; they threw them away after harvest.

“Were we quiet enough?”

Gird leaped up and barely stopped the bellow that tried to fight its way from his throat. Ivis was grinning at him, along with the rest of the men who had gone around the bog. Rage clouded his vision for a moment as his heart raced. He felt he would explode. They were all watching, with the wary but smug look of villagers who have just outwitted a stranger. Another cluster of raindrops landed on his head, cold as ever, and it was suddenly funny. They had outwitted him, as fair as any trick he’d ever seen.

“You—” he began, growling over the laughter that was coming despite his rage. “Yes, damn you, you were quiet enough.” A chuckle broke loose, then another. “Now let’s see how quietly you can march home, eh?”

They were not as quiet, for the rainy spring evening began to close in fast, and they had to hurry. When they came to the clearing, Gird was glad he’d told Pidi to stay and mind the fire; they all needed to crowd near the glowing coals. Pidi had cooked beans, flavored slightly with the herbs he’d gathered.

Next morning was damp and foggy, but not actively raining. Gird woke stiff and aching, with a raw throat. Around him, the others were still sleeping, Pidi with the boneless grace of all small children. Gird pushed himself up, cursing silently, and crouched by the fire-pit. He held out a hand to the banked fire—still warmth within. But dry fuel? He peered around in the dimness. Someone—Pidi, he supposed—had made a crude shelter of stone, and laid sticks in it. They might be drier than the rest. He poked the fire cautiously with one of them, uncovering raw red coals. After a moment, the end of the stick flared. Dry enough. He yawned until his jaw cracked, then coughed as the raw air hit his sore throat. Sleeping wet in wet clothes—he hadn’t done that for years. He’d never enjoyed it.

Alone in the early morning gloom, he let himself sag into sour resentment. Forget the hot sib. What he needed was a good stout mug of ale. Two mugs. Maybe they could build barrels and brew? No, first they had to have a dry place to sleep. A drop of cold water hit his bald spot. No, first they had to have hats. He added more sticks to the fire. Some of them steamed, hissing but enough were dry to waken crackling flames. Someone across the clearing groaned, then coughed.

“Lady’s grace, I hurt all over,” he heard someone say. He felt better. If he wasn’t the only one, it didn’t mean he was too old for this. Another groan, more coughs. “I’d give anything for a mug of ale,” said another man. “Sib,” said someone else. “Anything but beans or soaked wheat,” said yet another. Gird felt much better. The soldiers had grumbled in the barracks, when he was a recruit. They’d grumbled when it rained and they had to work in it; they’d grumbled when it was hot and sweat rolled out from under their helmets. Grumbling was normal. He was normal. And he knew exactly what the sergeant had done about grumbling.

“Time to get up,” he said briskly.

A startled silence. A low mutter: “Gods above, he’s up. He’s got the fire going.” He heard more stirrings, and turned to see men sitting up, clambering to their feet, rolling over to come up on one elbow. He grinned at them.

“Can’t fight a war in bed,” he said. Utter disbelief in some faces, amused resignation in others. Pidi, who had not walked to the bog and back, came over to the fire, all bright eyes and eagerness.

“I found most of the roots and barks for sib.” He showed Gird a small pile which Gird would not have recognized, “There’s no kira in sight of camp, and you told me not to leave—”

“Good for you,” said Gird. “Do you know how much of each?” He certainly didn’t. Pidi nodded.

“But it takes a long time. Do you want me to start it?”

“Go ahead. We need it.”

While Pidi started the sib, Gird went off to the new jacks trench, along with several others. Already the camp smelled better, he thought. Certainly the men looked better, even grumpy and stiff as they were. That hike in the rain had accomplished something.

“We need to set up work groups,” Gird said without preamble, as they gathered near the fire. “A hand to each group—” They began shuffling themselves into clusters of five. Gird had thought of assigning them to groups, but decided to let them pick their partners—for now, at least. With his knife, he shaped chunks of bark peeling from a fallen limb into the familiar tallies of the farmer. “One notch for food, two for tools, three for camp chores. Two groups get a food tally, and one hand each for the others. We’ll drill after breakfast, then the groups go to their assignments—”

“What’s food for?” asked Triga. “We’re the ones get to eat?” No one laughed. Gird shook his head.

“Those with a food tally go looking for food: hunt, gather herbs, tend the things we plant, later. Ivis, how did food donated by farmers come to you? Did someone tell you it was there, or did you go ask?”

“Every so often someone would come to the wood, and leave a feathered stick in a certain tree—that’s for Whitetree, the nearest. Fireoak usually brought the food itself, put it just inside the wood. Diamod traveled about so much, he’d know, or he’d see it and bring it in, or come get us to carry it. And sometimes, when things were very bad, one of us’d sneak into the village and beg.”

“Which is dangerous for them and for us both. And I suppose too much hunting would bring the foresters, wouldn’t it?”

“Aye. They don’t mind rabbits and hares and such, but the duke likes his deer hunts.”

“Well, we’ll have to do something. Fori’s good with his sling, and he can set snares: that’s something you can all learn. We need a better way to let the villagers know when we need something, and what it is. With a few more tools, we might be able to gather more food and lean on them less.” Gird handed the first food tally to the group Ivis was with. “You know the local village; you’ve got kin there. Find out what they can send, and when. What is the most trouble to them. When they’ve had trouble, and what gave them away. If they can’t send food, find out if they can send sacks, boxes, a bucket—anything we can use to store or prepare the food we have. Even little things: a small sack is better than none.”

“The other food tally.” Gird handed it to the group Fori was with. “Go some distance away from this camp, and then look for anything edible you can find. Birds’ eggs, birds in the nest, rabbits, squirrels—most creatures are having young about now; look for their hiding places.”

“Frogs?” Triga was not in that group, but he spoke up anyway.

“When you’re carrying the food tally, you can catch us frogs, Triga,” Gird said.

“And you’ll eat them?”

Gird swallowed hard. “I’ll do my best. Now—you are with the tool tally. You all know we need a lot of things we don’t have. Another shovel, axes, chisels. A shepherd’s crook would be handy for pulling down vines with edible berries; a drover’s stick for beating nuts from the nut trees next fall. We need pots to cook in, bowls to eat from, baskets or sacks to carry what our gatherers find, spoons, buckets, rope: every one of these will help us make more of what we need. Whoever holds the tool tally will work for that day on one of the things we need.”

“I can make baskets,” Triga said. Everyone stared at him; usually women made baskets. He reddened. “I used to plait the grasses in the bog,” he said. “First just for something to do, and then to see what I could make.”

“Could you make a basket from anything around here?” asked Gird. He did not want to make another trek to the bog so soon.

Triga stared around, uncertain. “Maybe . . . I can try . . . but it may not work right the first time.”

“That’s all right. If you find a way, it’s time well spent. Any of the rest of you like to whittle?” One man raised his hand. “Good—why don’t you start whittling some spoons, and bowls if you find the right chunks of wood. You others try it—anything’s better than nothing.”

“What about the guard we send out to listen for foresters?” asked Ivis.

“From the last group, those with camp chores tally. Two go out, and three will have plenty to do here. Gathering wood for the fire, tending the fire, and some other things I’ve thought up. But first—we didn’t do any drill yesterday, so let’s line up.”

This time they lined up quickly and almost evenly. They all started on the same foot, and they marched almost in step from the firepit to the stream, still in lines. Wavery lines, but lines. Gird showed them how to turn in place to the right and left, and then had them march around the camp as a column of twos. They had to weave in and out of trees, and they were soon out of step, but the pairs did manage to stay side by side. By this time Gird was warm and had worked the stiffness out, so he sent the two groups with food tallies off, and picked two guards from the camp chores group. One of the remaining three he sent in search of the driest wood he could find, one sat by the fire, and Gird beckoned to the last.

He had had the idea that they could weave lengths of wattle, as he’d used for the barton gate, and the fence between his smallgarden and his neighbor’s. Wattle laid at an angle against a log might give some protection from wet. He explained what he had in mind to Artha, a very tall, loose-jointed man nearly bald on top. Artha had vague, hazy blue eyes, and the least initiative Gird had seen.

“But I don’t—that wattle, now, we all’s made it wi’ the sticks i’ the ground, like. Put the sticks down in the wet mud, my granda he said, and then put the vines through, back and forth, back and forth—”

“But the sticks don’t have to be in the ground,” Gird said. The times he’d mended his gate, without ever taking it down, he knew that. Artha stood slack-handed, his jaw hanging. Gird realized that this was going to take firmness, as if Artha had been a child. “Artha, bring me some sticks, about so long—” He spread his arms to show the length.

“All right, but I dunno how you’ll do it lessen you put them sticks in the mud first—”

“Never mind, just bring me the sticks.” Artha ambled off, and Gird searched up and down the streambank until he found a willow sprouting multiply from the muck. He cut the pliant sprouts and stacked them.

By midday, Gird looked around the busy campsite and smiled to himself. The voices he heard all sounded content; one man was even whistling “Nutting in the Woods.” His sergeant and his father had both been right: idleness was a fool’s delight, and work brought its own happiness. Triga had created one lopsided basket from the same willow sprouts Gird was using, and then torn it down to make it “right” as he said. Now he was halfway through again. It didn’t look quite like any basket Gird had seen, but it was going to be a useful size, he could tell. The man who liked to whittle—Kerin, that was—had turned out three recognizable spoons. He’d pointed out that he needed something to rub them with, to finish them, and one of the others had experimented with Gird’s collection of cobbles. Gird and Artha had made one length of wattle, not quite an armspan wide by twice that in length. Gird held it up to the light: it would no more keep water out than a basket, he thought. But it would support something else. Leaves? A deerhide?

Late afternoon brought the food gatherers back. First came the hunting and gathering group, with a miscellany of edibles. Birds’ eggs from different kinds of nests: small, round and beige, pointy and blue with speckles, streaked with brown on beige. They’d found a rabbit’s burrow, and while the blind, squirming kits had been very small, there were eight of them. Fori had knocked another squirrel out of a tree, and they’d found a squirrel nest—but that led to near disaster, when Fori, precariously wrapped around the slender bole, had met a furious mother squirrel face to face. Fori had come down faster than he went up, losing skin off his arms. “But I have a nose, still,” he said. They had also, on the advice of one of the others, dug up the roots of the thick-leaved grasslike plants that grew along the stream lower down. One man had the bight of his shirt full of last fall’s nuts: some were rotting or sprouting, but some were still whole and sweet.

Ivis’s group had come back with little food, but other important treasures. “Gars says he never used his granda’s old stone tools—even his granda didn’t—but look—” and he emptied a well-worn, greasy leather sack. Gird looked at the odd-shaped bits of stone curiously. He could remember seeing clutter like that in someone’s cottage . . . and old Hokka had used a sickle set with tiny stone blades. But he’d never used stone tools himself. “They’re sharp,” Ivis said, as if he’d asked. “Gars thinks some of them had handles—wooden handles—but I don’t know how they’d fasten. But you can cut with them.” Some were obviously blades, thin shards of stone like broken pottery. Others were rough lumps with a sharp edge, like handax heads, or chisels. Kerin poked at them.

“I could use these . . . it would be easier to make a bowl with this than a knife . . .” Gird nodded; that got him off the hook.

“Fine—try them, and if you can teach someone else—” He turned to thank Ivis, but Ivis was still grinning.

“That’s not all. Look here—” Wrapped in a wet cloth, he had brought seedlings of the common greenleaves: cabbage, lettuce. . . . The villagers had liked the idea of the outlaws growing some of their own food, and he’d been given as much as he could carry without crushing it. One of the men carried a small round cheese, and another had a large lump of tallow. He had also thought to ask for things Gird hadn’t mentioned: beeswax, soap, thread. “Best of all—” Ivis nodded at the last member of his team, who pulled a bundle from under his shirt. It was cloth, something rolled into a lump—but the deepest, most intense blue Gird had ever seen.

“What is that?” he asked.

Ivis grinned. “You know the lords won’t let us have blue clothes—”

“Yes. I never saw any.”

“This is old, from my granda’s time. He used to say that the blue was expensive—it came from some kind of blue stone, from far away north—but before the lords came it was a favorite color. Good luck color. Anyway, my brother says if you’re serious about overturning the lords, best we’d have some blue shirts.”

Gird unfolded the bundle carefully. Two blue shirts, each decorated with intricate embroidery around the neck, flowers and grain in brilliant colors. The old woolen cloth was as sound as ever. “Where had they kept this? Not even a moth hole . . .”

“I don’t know. My brother’s the eldest; he knew about it and I didn’t. But I do remember my granda’s stories. What do you think?”

“I think it’s good luck,” said Gird, refolding the shirts carefully.

Chapter Twelve

On a bright, blustery day in early summer, Gird led his troop eastward through the wood. There were twenty-four of them now, and every one of them carried his own spoon and bowl as well as his own belt knife. Each had a hat, plaited of grass and oiled against rain, and a staff about his own height. Each had three flat hard loaves of bread tucked into his shirt. And they marched quietly through the wood, with Diamod scouting ahead, and Triga bringing up the rear.

They were on their way to meet another of the Stone Circle groups two days away; Diamod (as usual) made contact. Behind them, the forester’s campsite was clean and bare; they had moved all their gear some days back to another site Gird had found. Gird found himself about to whistle, and didn’t. They were all doing well, including the new ones. He’d been surprised when three more came from his old village; a friend of Fori’s, Teris’s son Orta, and Siga, a single man about ten years Gird’s junior.

They had told him all the latest news: how the steward had come to Gird’s cottage only to find it stripped to the bare walls. He had taken that for Gird’s impudence, but the villagers had done it, hiding every pot, tool, and bit of cloth. Gird had felt tears burning his eyes when the boys showed what they brought—his people, his neighbors, had cared that much, to risk themselves to save his things, and then to send their sons with it. Irreplaceable treasure indeed: two hammers, three chisels, his awl and his axe, a shovel blade, a spokeshave, a plane, a kettle, a longhandled metal spoon, firetongs, the cowhides that had been stretched across the bed-frames, a furl of cloth that still showed rusty bloodstains . . . “We couldn’t carry it all,” Orta had explained. “But if you go back, or send someone, there’s more.”

His eyes still burned, thinking of it. He blinked the tears away, and told himself to keep his mind on the journey.

Part of that involved watching out for forage along the way. They had all learned, since he came, to make use of whatever food came along. Gird had even eaten one of Triga’s frogs; he was sure it wriggled in his throat, but he had to admit it tasted like food. More or less. Some of the others refused, but most followed his lead. He still didn’t like frogs for dinner, but better that than hunger. Now he scanned the undergrowth on either side for edible berries and fruits, herbs and mushrooms. Fori, still the best slinger in the troop, would be watching the trees for squirrels or levets.

Gird wished it had been possible to leave Pidi with someone. The boy was too young for this, he told himself again—but then again, the boy was not as young as he might be. The black eye had faded, leaving only a faint dark stain beneath, but the little child he had been, thoughtless and carefree, had not come back. Pidi seemed happy enough—he laughed sometimes, and scampered through the woods like a young goat—but he would never be carefree. It would have happened in time, Gird knew, but—he shook that thought away. There was no safe place for Pidi. Home had not been safe. That led him to Rahi, and the black sorrow pierced him again. She had lost the child, in fever, and when he’d last heard, a few days ago, she was still too weak to get up.

A gust of wind roared by overhead, whipping the forest canopy and letting a flash of sunlight through. The Windsteed in spring seeks the far-ranging Mare . . . he thought, clicking his tongue in the rhythm of the chant. This was late for the Windsteed’s forays, but what else could it be? He accepted the omen, and let the wind blow away his dark thoughts. It never paid to argue with the gods, any of them.

That night he insisted that their temporary campsite be set up as neatly as the old one. No one argued. Fori lopped a sapling to make a handle for the shovel blade, tied it snugly, and began digging the jacks trench. They would have no fire, but they ate their beans (cooked the night before) from bowls, with spoons. Even plain beans tasted better that way, not scooped up with fingers. Almost before he said anything, the correct tally group had gathered up bowls and spoons to wash them in the creek by the camp; when they were done, everyone stripped down and bathed.

The full measure of what he had accomplished became obvious when they met the other Stone Circle group the next afternoon. They had come out of the wood, and angled between some brush-covered hills, and down a crooked stream bed. The other group had a guard out to meet them—that much Gird could approve—but they could smell the camp long before it came in sight. He noticed that his men wrinkled their noses as well. He had not intended to bring them in as a formal drill, but they began to fall in step, rearranging themselves into a column.

They came into a space set off by a rocky bluff on one side, and house-high thickets of pickoak on the others, to find unkempt men lounging around a smoking fire. Someone had stretched a line between two trees, from which flapped something intended as laundry, but Gird could not recognize one whole garment. His own troop fairly strutted into the clearing, and came to a smart halt without the command he forgot to give. The others stared at them, wide-eyed as cattle staring over a gate. The one who seemed to be the leader, a redhaired man whose sunburnt nose was peeling, stared as hard as any. Then he got up from his log.

“I don’t believe it. Diamod, you said these were farmers?”

Diamod smirked. “I said these were farmers who had learned soldiering. Was I right?”

“You—and you must be Gird.” The man came forward, looking Gird over with interest.

“I’m Gird, yes.”

“And you were a soldier?”

“Years ago I was a recruit. Then a farmer. Now—what you see.”

The man looked along the column, and swallowed. “What I see is hard to believe. How long have you been training them?”

Gird squinted, thinking. “Since late-plowing time. I was finishing plowing the day it happened.”

“I didn’t tell him everything,” Diamond interrupted.

“And you did that much that fast. Can you teach us?”

“I might, aye. But there’s more than just marching in step.”

“Swordfighting, of course. Or do you use spears?”

Gird laughed. “We don’t use swords or spears—where would we get them?”

The man’s face fell. “But—what do you fight with? Not just sticks, surely.”

He had not intended this kind of entrance, or a display of the other things he’d been teaching his men, but this was a chance he could not overlook.

“Aruk!” he said. Behind him, twenty-four sticks came up, to be held stiffly in front of each man. Gird took a step forward, clearing the necessary space, and said, “Form—troop.” This was tricky; they’d only been doing it right a few days, and it looked anything but soldierly if someone forgot. Properly, it took them from a column to the parade formation in smart steps and turns, each pair coming forward and spreading to the sides. It might have been wiser to simply face the column right or left and pretend that was the same maneuver—but if this worked, it was far more impressive. He did not look around; he wanted to see how these others reacted. From the even tramp behind him, and the heavy breathing, they were doing it right. From the faces in front of him, it looked professional.

Now he turned, as neatly as he could, and looked at his troop. They had all made it into place, still with sticks held vertically before them. Now came the interesting part. He gave the commands crisply, and the sticks rotated: left, right, horizontal, vertical, all moving together in an intricate dance of wood. No one was off-count today; he was proud of them.

“But—” the redhaired man said. Gird spun around to him.

“You fight with a sword?”

“Not very well yet, but—”

“These sticks are longer than swords. You can’t fence against a sword, no, but you can poke with it—just as you’d poke cattle through a gap. D’you think soldiers are harder to move than cattle, if you hit them right?”

“Well—no. But I thought—”

“If you want to learn from me—what’s your name, anyway?”

“Felis.”

“Felis, if you want to learn from me, the first thing is to clean up this stinking camp!” He had not quite meant to be that rude, but a gust of wind brought the foulness thick into his lungs.

“But what’s that got to do with—”

“Yes or no.”

“Well, yes, but—”

Gird glared around at the men in the camp, most of whom were sitting up more alertly now, sensing a fight coming. Two were not; they lay against the rock face, with another crouched beside them.

“What’s wrong with them?” Gird asked, pointing.

Felis glanced that way, then shrugged. “Sim has some kind of fever, and Pirin has the flux—”

“And you ask why the stink matters! Didn’t you have jacks where you came from? Didn’t the grannies teach you about any of that?”

Felis flushed dark red. “We don’t have any tools, hardly, and it’s not so easy out here away from the towns—”

Gird snorted. He felt good, the righteous anger running in his veins like stout ale at harvest. “You thought soldiering was easy? You thought fighting a war was going to be easy?” His sergeant had said something like that more than once—he had the rhythm right, anyway. Felis glared at him, but said nothing. Gird went on. “You ask any of these men—Ivis, or Diamod—if we had more than this when I started. You ask them if someone can smell our camp from as far away.”

Some of the men were standing now, coming forward slowly. Gird could not tell if they came in support of their leader, or from curiosity. Felis looked around, seeking support.

“There’s no way—we don’t have good ground here, for digging jacks and such. It’s hard enough to find enough to eat, and—”

A taller man intervened. “So what would you do, stranger, if you had command here? Or is it all talk?”

Gird raised his brows ostentatiously. “Do you want us to show you? Or had you rather live like this?”

“Show us!” Felis spat. “Go ahead—let’s see what you can do.”

“Your people must help,” Gird said. Felis shrugged.

“I won’t make them. You can try.”

“You’re giving me command?” There was a moment’s absolute silence, on everyone’s indrawn breath. Felis paled; his jaw clenched. Then he spread his hands.

“For one day, for what you can do. I’ll be interested. Of course, we’ve nothing to share for supper.” Gird was sure that was a lie, but he smiled.

“We brought our own, and enough for return,” he said. Then he turned his back on Felis, taking that chance, and dismissed his own men “—to your tally groups.”

Raising his voice to reach all the men in the camp, he said, “You have two bad problems. The first is your jacks, which is making you sick with its filth. No need to ask where it isn’t—but you need a good deep trench far away from the creek.”

“The ground’s all rocky hereabout,” said the tall man. “We can’t dig it with our fingernails.”

“Fori.” Gird put out his hand, and Fori handed him the shovel blade. “Here’s a shovel, if you can put a handle to it. Anyone here can cut a pole, or—”

“I’ll cut a pole,” said the tall man. He turned on his heel and stalked off. Gird watched him for a moment, then went on.

“What do you have to carry things in?” he asked the group at large. After a moment’s silence, someone pointed to the kettle on the fire, and a large wooden bowl. Gird smiled at them. “That’s more than we had,” he said. “We had no kettle. But we don’t dirty a kettle with filth. Triga, I’ll want some baskets. Any of you men know how to make a basket?”

“A man make baskets?” asked one with a low whistle. Gird put out his hand to stop Triga (and Triga’s arm was there—predictable as always) and said “Don’t laugh; Triga’s a good enough soldier to know that supplies help win wars. Learn from him; we need baskets to haul that stinking waste into the hole you—” He nodded at the tall man who had cut his pole and was bringing it back, “—are going to dig for it.”

“I’m not moving any of that filth!” snarled someone across the firepit. Gird heard mutters of agreement, and the amused chuckles of his own men.

“Move the filth, or move yourselves,” Gird said. “It’s killing you—and you know it.”

“That’s not all,” came Ivis’s voice from behind him, “he’ll have you bathing, and if you get a cut, he makes you scrub it out with soaproot. Besides, nobody wants to eat in this stench. Just get rid of it.”

Gird grinned at his people, and walked over to the firepit. The kettle on it gave off a thin steam, but he could not tell what was in it. The overall stink was too strong. “What is it?” he asked the man tending the fire.

“Grain mush. It’s been grain mush for months, ’cept when someone snares a rabbit, or finds a berry patch.”

“No bread?”

The man squinted up at him. “You a housewife? I never learned to make bread. Besides, it takes things we don’t have.”

“You’ll get them.” Gird patted the man’s shoulder, and left him peering backwards, stirring ashes instead of the fire.

Now for the sick men. He knew he’d been lucky that none of his own troop had sickened yet. Although he’d tried to nurse his mother and Mali, he knew very little of the healing arts. Cleanliness, of course—everyone knew that the fever spirits thrived on foul smells and dirt. They grew fat and multiplied on what made healthy men ill. It was nearly impossible to be clean enough to keep them all away (his mother had insisted that even a speck of old milk left in the bucket could feed enough spirits to ruin the next batch) but the cleaner the better.

The stench worsened as he neared the sick men. One of them had red fever patches on his cheeks; his breath was labored, almost wheezing. His eyes were shut, and he didn’t pay any attention to Gird. The other, pale and sweating, had vomited; the man with him was wiping his face clean. Gird felt a tug at his sleeve, and turned. Pidi, almost as pale, had come up beside him.

“I picked some breakbone weed on the way—it might help for the fever. But I didn’t bring any flannelweed.”

“Boiling water,” said Gird. “See if they have another pot, and be sure you get the water well upstream.” Pidi went off, and Gird forced himself to squat down beside the sick men. The caretaker glared at him.

“Ya canna’ do aught for ’em. This’n’ll die by morning; feel his head.” Gird reached out to the fevered man, whose forehead felt like a hot stone—dry. “And this’n, bar he stops heaving, he’ll go in a day or two. He’s lost all he can, below, and I can’t get ’im to the jacks we got, let alone the jacks you say you’ll dig.”

“You know flannelweed?” Gird asked. The man shrugged.

“I’m no granny, with a parrion of herbs. What be you, man or woman?”

Gird took hold of his wrist and squeezed until the bones grated; the man paled. “Man enough, if strength makes men. But I’d be glad of a woman’s parrion of healing, if ’twould save lives. Have you sought a healer?”

“Aye. Felis brought one from the vill, a hand or more of days ago, when it was just Jamis here. But she was like you, all twinchy about the smell. Said we’d have to clean it up afore she could do aught. So’s Felis told her what he told you, and she huffed off, about holding her nose.”

Gird let go of the man’s wrist, and picked up the rag sodden with vomit. “This’ll do him no good here, but to make him heave again.” He tossed it away, and turned back to the sick man, who was staring at him with the frantic look of a trapped animal. “If we can find flannelweed, and get you to a clean place—I’ll try, at least.” He made himself touch the man’s hands, filthy as they were, and managed not to flinch when the man clutched at him.

“Please, sir—please—”

“I’ll try.” Gird looked at the sulky caretaker. “You can go clean up; I’ll get my people to carry them.”

“You’re welcome to it.” The man stalked away, clearly furious, rubbing the wrist Gird had bruised.

Gird looked around. Herf, in the tally group for camp chores, had picked up the stinking rag on a stick, and was carrying it toward the stream. He could hear the solid chunks of the shovel at work somewhere among the pickoaks. Ivis came up.

“Are you going to want to move them? I can have someone cut poles—”

“Yes, and I’ll need a bucket of clean water, if you can find one. Does anyone but Pidi know flannelweed?”

“I’ll ask. Those rags on the line aren’t really clean, but they’re cleaner than that—” Ivis pointed to the sodden rags under the two men.

“We’ll need them, but not here. No sense in dirtying them now.” Gird unhooked the sick man’s fingers from his hand, one by one, and stood up. Pidi was coming back down the slope with a bucket of water—had he had to go all the way up to find clean? Triga, Gird saw, had a cluster of men around him—presumably he was making a basket and showing them how. Artha—who, Gird wondered, had told him?—was carefully scooping ash from the cool side of the firepit into a sack of some kind. The cook looked furious, but wasn’t interfering.

Gird went to look at the stream, and shuddered. It looked as if hogs had wallowed in it, and it smelled worse. All along the banks, except at a crossing, were the uncovered remnants of a long encampment. Flies swarmed over them, rising in a cloud when he came near. Some of the filth had fallen into the stream and was far too wet to shift easily. It had been foul so long that rocks in the stream were slimed with luxuriant green weed, its brilliant color clear evidence of the steady supply of filth. It would be best to move the camp entirely, but he could not do that by himself.

“Gahhh.” Diamod had come up behind him. “This is worse than I recall. But perhaps you’ve changed my nose for me.”

“It’s a damned shame,” said Gird. He was angry again, but this time with a slow, steady anger that would burn for days. “It’s hard enough to think of fighting the lords, with their soldiers and their weapons. We can’t be fighting ourselves, too. There’s no village this bad; these men came from better. They should know.”

“So did we, but we didn’t do it until you made us. Be fair, Gird, when you were a boy, did you do more than your father demanded? Or your sergeant?”

“I grew to a man,” Gird said, growling, and forcing away the memory of his boyhood sulks. Had his mother really had to threaten beatings to get him to clean the milk pails? Had his father clouted him more than once for leaving muck on the tools? He sighed gustily. “True, I was the same way. But now—they’re men, they should know better.”

“Teach them, like you taught us.”

“I wish I could move the camp. Now. This moment.”

Diamod grinned. “Tomorrow, maybe: the way you’re going, you could do that.”

Gird stared moodily at the mess near his feet. “We can’t move all this tonight. Ashes, I suppose for the rest.” He turned and called Artha. “There may not be enough—but try to spread ashes on all of this. Up-stream and down. Don’t step in it.”

“No, Gird.”

On his way to see how the trench was coming, Gird passed Triga, who held up one of his “fast” baskets, a flat, scoop-shaped affair. “Gird, it might go faster if we had something like a hoe, to scrape the stuff right into the basket.” A solution creating another problem, Gird thought, but one of the local men looked surprised and said “We have a hoe—course, it’s just wood—”

“Fine,” said Gird. “Triga, I don’t think we can move it all tonight, but see what you can do with that.” Triga nodded, not sulky at the moment. It had to be eating frogs, Gird thought, that made a man so touchy on some things so reasonable when given a problem to solve.

The steady thunk of the shovel led him to the trench diggers. The tall man who had cut the pole for the shovel handle was jabbing the dirt with another, pointed pole to loosen it for the man with the shovel. Four others—two of Gird’s, and two locals—were picking out rocks ahead of the shovel. The trench was deep enough, and reasonably straight, but it would never hold the accumulation on the banks of the stream. This would do for current and future use.

“Fori—” Fori was on the shovel at that moment; he looked up. “We’re going to need another hole for the old stuff. Not a trench; just a pit. Let’s put it farther back in the wood, away from this.” Fori nodded, and shouldered the shovel. The other men looked from Gird to Fori, and back to Gird. “Artha’s got the ashes; I told him to go ahead and use them where they are, but he can get more.”

“Does Triga have carriers yet?” asked Fori.

“Yes, and a hoe for scraping up.” Gird glanced up at the sky; it wasn’t long until sundown. “We can’t finish tonight, but we can get a start on it.”

The tall man leaned on his pole and looked at Gird. “You remind me of my da. He was always one for starting a job now.”

Gird smiled. “I was just thinking of my own da.” He turned away, sure that Fori could handle that little group by himself. By now, Pidi should have hot water—and he’d forgotten that he’d sent Ivis to find someone to find flannelweed. And where were the food tally groups?

Back in the clearing, he noticed a controlled activity. Pidi crouched over a bucket of steaming water, chatting with the local cook, who looked much less sulky. Felis, of all people, was gathering the dry rags off the line. Ivis, Cob, and Herf were crouched near the sick men; a stack of sticks had appeared by the firepit; and much of the clutter of the campsite was gone, replaced by clumps of gear that he suspected were not really organized. But it looked better, and he could walk across the open space without tripping over bits of wood and someone’s rotted boot. His own men and the locals were moving about as if they had something to do and were doing it. The cook waved to him, and Gird veered toward the firepit.

“This boy says he’s yours—right?”

“Right.” Gird tousled Pidi’s hair. “My youngest.”

“You got nerve, dragging your boy along to a war.”

Gird gave him a hard look. “I had no choice. They threw me out of my holding, because my daughter’s husband tried to defend her—and I hit one of them—so did Pidi, for that matter, boy that he is.”

“Oh. Your daughter—she died?”

Gird could feel his head beginning to pound; Pidi laid a hand on his arm, and he realized he’d made a fist. “No. She’s alive, last I heard, but she lost the baby. And she may die. I don’t know.”

The man gulped, and looked away. “I’m sorry.” After a pause, in which Gird tried to get his temper locked down again, he said, “The lad brought me herbs, for flavoring. Wild onions, too. Most lads don’t know that.”

“His mother and sister both had a parrion of herbcraft. Pidi learned quickly.”

“This’s not ready, Da, but it might help.” Pidi pointed to the steaming bucket, in which Gird could now see leaves steeping. He sniffed the sharp-smelling steam.

“At least it smells good.” He dipped some in his own bowl, and took it over to the sick men. Now he’d have to remember not to eat from his bowl until he could wash it. But Ivis had found a wooden cup the fevered man had used. Gird poured the hot liquid into it carefully. Ivis and Cob had stripped off his clothes, and washed him with the clean water they’d brought. Gird had no idea what the fever was; the man had the sour smell of sickness, but nothing he could recognize.

“Will he rouse at all?”

Ivis shrugged. “He opened his eyes when we first touched him with the wet cloth, but said nothing.”

Gird held the steaming cup under the man’s nostrils; they twitched. “Let’s lift him, and see if he’ll drink.”

Cob looked worried. “The healer in our village said if they’re not awake, don’t make them drink.”

“Just a sip.” Gird was sure the man was really dying, but felt he had to try. Ivis lifted him, and Gird held the cup to his lips. When he tried to pour a little in, it dribbled back out. Gird sighed. “Well. If he wakes, we can try again.”

“Do you think he’ll wake?”

“No. But I’m no healer; I could be wrong.”

They turned to the other man. Gird helped Herf bathe him with clean water, and wrap him in the cleanest clothes they could find. Gird hated touching the man’s clammy skin; it reminded him of tending Issa, who had been sick so often. They gave him a drink of clean water; he did not heave it up at once, so Gird felt more hopeful. He looked across the campsite, and saw Triga and someone else dragging loaded baskets away toward the pickoaks. Artha was back at the firepit, gathering more ashes.

“Do you think they would share our food?” asked Cob. That was what Gird had been thinking; he simply did not know.

“If they would, we’d have them in our troop before midnight,” said Ivis, grinning. “I still think it was that first hearthcake, Gird, that settled your place in our camp.”

Gird grinned back. “You were tougher than that. I thought it was Fori’s squirrels. But you know the customs: if they eat our food, and we don’t eat theirs, that’s their obligation and our protection. And they’ve already said they won’t share.”

“Felis said it. Felis may be wishing he hadn’t been so clever.”

“We can offer.” Gird stood up and headed for the firepit again. At this auspicious moment, one of his food tally groups returned, gleefully carrying the carcass of a young pig.

“If they won’t share now,” breathed Herf, “they’re so crazy we don’t want them.”

“How did they get that?” muttered Gird. “They haven’t been down robbing some farmer’s pigsty, have they?” When the commotion died down, he learned that they’d come across a sounder of wild swine, feasting on mushrooms and old acorns under the pick-oaks. One fell to a lucky shot by one of the slingers Fori had been trying to teach.

“I guess there were enough of us, so the most of them ran, and that one—it just knocked him flat, and then we landed on him, and slit his throat.”

“And the others didn’t come back. We were lucky.” Gird looked at his smug foragers, spattered with blood and dirt, and then around at the locals, who looked as hungry as wolves.

“We caught him, but he lived in your wood,” Gird said loud enough for all to hear. “We would share the feast.”

The local men in the clearing looked at Felis, who spread his hands. “All right. But all we have is grain mush.”

Gird breathed a sigh of relief. They should share food both ways; that made the obligations equal. “We would be glad to share freely, all we have with all you have.” He would like to have insisted that all of them, locals and his men alike, clean up before eating, but with the stream so foul that was impossible. He called his troop together, while the cook and Diamod fashioned a spit for roasting the pig, and supervised the washing of hands in clean water. No one argued; they seemed almost proud to demonstrate their superior habits to the locals. That led to a flurry of handwashing by the locals as well, and Gird was content.

Soon the smell of roasting pig overcame the worst of the camp’s stench. The cook caught the dripping juices off the pig, and stirred them into the mush, along with salt from Gird’s pouch. By the time the pig was done, Gird’s appetite had returned full force. With roast pig, mush, and the bread they’d brought, everyone had plenty to eat, and the conversations around the firepit were friendly. Then one of the locals got up and sauntered toward the creek.

“Use the new trench,” said Gird. The man stopped.

“But it’s dark. I couldn’t find it.”

“Cob, help him.”

The man opened his mouth to complain and shut it again. Cob was up, with a brand from the fire. “This way,” he said.

“But we always—” the man said, looking at Felis.

“Do it,” Felis said. “They fed us our own pig; they can tell us where to put our own jacks.”

Gird was up before dawn; the rank smell had gotten into his dreams, and he’d been pursued through dark tunnels by something with poison fangs and bad breath. His own men were curled up neatly enough under the edge of the pickoaks, where the smell was least. The locals were sprawled anyhow around the firepit. Gird went to the jacks, then picked his way to the firepit and poked up the fire. It was going to be a clear day, but dew had soaked the stones; he dared not sit down until they dried. He went to look at the sick men, and found that the fevered one had died in the night. The other was asleep, breathing easily. He put more wood on the fire, until it crackled, and then took a bucket and started upstream. On his way back, he met Fori with the other bucket.

“I thought this must be where you were,” said Fori. “And I knew you’d want more good water.”

“Another fifty paces up, there’s a clean creek coming in from one side. I went up that to a pool—I think there’s a spring under it.”

“That’s what Pidi said, when I asked him. Felis is asking for you.”

“Is he?” Gird went back down, stepping carefully as the water tried to slosh out of the bucket. Felis would have waked with one of two plans, and Gird hoped the man had sense. He doubted it; anyone who couldn’t stay out of his own mess could hardly be called sensible. Besides, it was never easy for a man to give up leadership.

Felis, however, had taken a third route Gird hadn’t thought of. “I talked to everyone,” he said, as soon as Gird came into the clearing. “They want to follow you. They think you know how to run an army.” Gird set the bucket down by the firepit, and blinked. He hadn’t expected Felis to ask the others himself, privately.

“What about you?” he asked.

Felis darkened with the easy blush of the redhead. “I wish I had done what you did,” he said. “I wish I’d thought of all that. All I thought of was fighting itself—I kept trying to learn swordfighting—”

Gird met his gaze. “Do you want to learn my way, or go your own?”

“I’ll stay, if you’ll let me.”

“You fooled me,” Gird said. “I thought you’d be angry, and go away.”

“I am angry,” said Felis. “But you did it fairly, and not to make me angry. Did you?”

“No. At least—” remembering his own anger of the day before, “—at least, I didn’t start that way. It seemed such a waste.”

Felis’s followers had been watching their conversation from a distance, furtively; when Gird and Felis smiled at each other and clasped hands, everyone relaxed.

That day was spent cleaning up the camp as best they could, while the new members learned how Gird’s system worked. Supper was less a feast, for no lucky catch rewarded that day’s hunters. But the camp stank less, and Pidi had given two draughts of flannelweed to the man with flux. He had not died, at least, and had not heaved all day.

“What now?” asked Felis, as they sat around the dying fire. “Are you going to drill us for a few hands of days, and then go take over another group?”

Gird yawned and stretched. He was very tired. “No,” he said. “No, I have another plan. The Stone Circle must learn drill, and all the soldiering possible, but we’ll never have enough outlaws to fight a war. We’ve got to have a way to train everyone. At home. While they farm, or make pots, or whatever it is they do.”

“How?” asked Cob, beside him.

“Tomorrow,” said Gird. “I’ll explain it all tomorrow.”

Chapter Thirteen

The newcomers, Gird discovered, had already grasped the idea of traveling quietly, with scouts ahead and behind. He led them back up the stream they had camped beside. The sick man looked as if he would definitely recover; they carried him in a pole-slung litter. All of them carried some piece of equipment, for Gird did not intend to return to that camp until it had had time to clean itself.

“I suppose you want us to dig a jacks trench every time we stop?” asked Felis.

“Yes.” Gird was ready to glare, but Felis merely shook his head, and grinned. They were halted for a noon rest on the shady side of a hill, where the scrub grew barely more than head-high. Summer heat shimmered on the slopes around them, and baked pungent scents from the scrub.

“So will you tell us your plan now?”

Gird looked around at the others. They were all listening; he wondered how they would react. Was there a better time? He thought not. But instead of answering Felis directly, he asked, “How many men did you have when you started?”

Felis frowned thoughtfully. “I didn’t start it—but there were three hands when I came. Then Irin died, and then two more came, and then six, but one of them died soon; he’d been hurt. Three hands, four—it went up and down.”

“And how many other groups are there, and how large do you think they are?”

Felis began tapping the ground, as if a map, to remind himself. “I heard of one away westward—beyond your village—Diamod went there once and said they had less than two hands of men. North and west, another, but I heard that one was captured and killed, all of them. Two hands, maybe three. South and east, someone told me of a large group: five or six hands of men, maybe more. But I heard they have fields, and can feed themselves.”

Gird nodded. “That’s what I thought. There may be more groups, but nowhere more than the farmers can support. We can’t feed ourselves. So a day or two of travel between groups—each one drawing food from two or three villages—and the villages are so poor. Four hands is a large group; five is too large for most. And without proper care for the food they do get, some of it is wasted. Diamod told me several years ago there were enough in the Stone Circle to fight a war, but ten soldiers here and fifteen there and twenty over here don’t make an army. They have to be together. Organized. Training together.”

“But I don’t see—”

“We need the Stone Circle: we need a place for men to go when they’ve been outlawed or have lost their holdings. But we need an army more. And we need an army that can feed itself during training, house itself during training, clothe itself—”

“It’s impossible!”

“No, I don’t think so.” Gird let his eyes wander from face to face. “We were all farmers, craftsmen—we fed ourselves, housed ourselves—and in the evenings, off-season, we sat around our bartons or our homes and talked.”

“Yes, and you yourself would have nothing to do with fighting when you still had your holding,” said Diamod boldly.

“That’s true, because you wanted me to sneak away and teach you drill—go away from my home, and my work, and risk discovery both ways, to teach strangers. I say now I was wrong. But what I told you then still has force. Suppose you had said, ‘Let us teach you how to fight and defend yourselves—here in your own village, you and the men you know best fighting shoulder to shoulder to protect your own against the lords.’ Do you think I might have answered differently?”

A long silence. Diamod opened his mouth and shut it. Felis pulled a grass stem, chewed it, and spat it out. The others said nothing, but all the faces conveyed shifting thoughts and emotions. Finally Triga said, “You mean for us to go into villages and teach farmers what you’ve taught us—by ourselves?”

“It won’t work,” said Herf suddenly. “It can’t—the lords would see it, their guards would. Right under their noses, peasants drilling? They’d be hung on the spikes by nightfall.”

“There aren’t guards stationed in every village,” said Ivis. “If they would have their own scouts out, to see anyone coming—”

“Better than that,” said Gird. “Think how our villages are built. Every cottage, nearly, has its own—”

“Barton!” said Fori, eyes suddenly alight. “Walled in—no one can see, but over the back gate—”

“That’s right,” said Gird. “Bartons. Big enough to teach a few men to march together, use sticks. No one notices when the men go into a barton of an evening, or the noise that comes out of it—men telling jokes, drinking ale—” He could suddenly feel it, the mellow flow of liquid down his throat that would ease his joints and make the old stories new again.

Felis pursed his lips. “Not everyone in the village will do it—what about those who don’t? What if they report it?”

“Start small. One or two, let the locals decide who else to ask. Nobody in my village would’ve reported it to the steward, though some wouldn’t come. Let ’em stay home. And if the guards do come, what’s to see? A group of men talking and singing, same as any evening.”

On face after face, Gird could see the idea take root and grow. He watched its progress through the group. It would work; he knew it would work. It had come to him in a flash of insight so intense that it waked him out of a sound sleep. He had been planning to try it, but the attack on Rahi had come first.

“So: you train us, and we train them. Just those of us here could reach five, six hands of villages, and if every village trained four hands of men—”

“But would we try to move in with them? Someone would surely notice that—”

Gird nodded. “I know. I’m not sure what the best way is, but I’m sure that training the farmers at home is part of it.” He stretched, relieved that they seemed to understand his point and agree. “But right now, each one of you must know everything I know—and be able to teach it. And if you know something I don’t, you must teach me.”

“You don’t know everything?” asked Felis slyly.

“No. I didn’t know how to plait baskets or cook frogs; Triga taught me that.” Triga grinned and raised a fist. “We all share some knowledge—the farmers among us, at least. But many of us have special skills, something extra, which we can share with others.”

By Midsummer Eve, Gird had both groups drilling with sticks. They camped apart, for he still could not feed both at once. One campsite lay just within the east side of the wood, and the other was near (but carefully not in) Triga’s bog. But the flow of information, skills, and supplies went back and forth almost daily. They drilled apart three days, and came together on the fourth, to practice larger group movement outside the forest, on a grassy hillside.

Both camps had the clean, tidy look of a good master’s workshop—and it was a workshop, as Gird explained often. If they had an army someday, of farmers who had trained in their bartons, they would have to have camps in the field, and those camps would have to have jacks, kitchens, shelters for wounded, space to store supplies. Here, in small groups, they could learn what worked, and later they could show others.

As summer days lengthened, the food-gathering groups were able to bring back more and more supplies. Gird insisted that some of these be stored for emergencies. They dried fruit on lattices of plaited grass, cut the wild grain and threshed it, dug edible tubers, honed their skill at slinging and throwing. Archery was harder. Of the four bows between the two groups, one had broken early, and it seemed no one could make good arrows. Still, the best of them occasionally hit a bird or rabbit. Each camp had its own handmill, and when there was grain to grind, they had bread. Gird toyed with the idea of trying to brew some ale, but they really couldn’t afford the grain. Maybe after harvest time, he thought—next winter would be cold and dismal enough, without giving up ale entirely.

Gird rotated all the men through all the tally groups, but noticed which had special abilities. The whittlers, sure of an appreciative audience, worked even when not on actual tool duty, fashioning spoons and bowls, dippers and pothooks. Some of the men took to the old stone tools, and one liked to spend his spare time chipping new blades from flint cobbles. No one sneered, now, at those who could make useful baskets, or sew neat patches.

On Midsummer Eve, lacking ale, they drank the fresh juice of wild grapes and sat out under the stars, singing the old traditional songs. Like Midwinter, Midsummer was a fireless night, but this one was not dark and cold. In the freshness before Midsummer dawn, when every sweet scent of the earth redoubled its strength, Gird lay in the long grass and wished they could have women with them. The other men, too, were restless, remembering the traditional end to all those traditional songs, when the brief hours of darkness were spent first hunting the elusive flowers said to bloom only that night, and then celebrating them. Gird thought of his first night with Mali, of all the Midsummers he’d spent with her. A breath of air moved, wafting still more scent past him, and he rolled up on one elbow. She had been dead, and he had not gone back out, but now he was out, and he could not stop thinking about it.

Of course it would not do. He made himself get up and walk around the others, who pretended to be asleep. The two or three who were really asleep risked dangerous dreams, on Midsummer night. They snored, or muttered, and tossed uneasily. He did not wake them, walking farther away into the stillness. Dew lay heavy on the grass, gray-silver in the starlight, in the slow light of dawn that rose from the east in faintly colored waves.

Two days later, he had just come from the eastern camp, and was nearing the other, when Diamod met him on the trail.

“I have to tell you something,” he said. Gird stopped. He had made a rule that they not talk on the trail, even when chance-met like this. But Diamod’s expression declared this an emergency.

“What, then?”

“Your daughter Raheli—”

Gird’s heart contracted; his vision hazed. “She’s dead.” Despite the two reports he had had, he had continued to worry, sure that she might yet die of her injuries or her sorrow. He had worked harder, to keep himself from thinking about it, but her face haunted him.

“No—she’s come.”

Relief and shock contended; he felt that the ground beneath him swayed “Come? You mean—come here? They wouldn’t keep her?”

“They would have been glad to keep her; she would not stay. She has come here, and she insists she is joining us.”

“No!” That was loud enough to send birds squawking away in the forest canopy overhead, and loud enough for any forester to hear. Gird bit back another bellow and lowered his voice. “It’s impossible. She can’t—”

“You come tell her that. She followed me here from Fireoak—I didn’t even know she was following until I reached the wood, and then I couldn’t—I didn’t think I should—send her back. Or that she’d go.”

Rahi alive, and well enough to walk so far—that was as much as he’d hoped. More. He wanted to see her, hold her, know she was whole and strong again. He remembered the blood on her face, on her body. When he looked at Diamod, the man seemed to have understood his very thought, because he nodded slowly.

“Yes, she has a terrible scar, and no, she seems not to mind. She wore no headscarf. Something else, she’s dressed like a man.”

Gird shook his head, shrugged, could not think of anything to say. Most headstrong of his children—how was he going to convince her to leave? If she had come this far, it would not be easy, and if she refused to obey him, it would cause him trouble with the men.

“What has she said to the men?” he asked Diamod.

“She said she was your daughter, and must see you. She had told me she meant to stay, but when I left she had said nothing else to the others.”

“Thank Alyanya’s grace for that,” said Gird. He shivered, flicked his fingers to avert the trouble, whatever it had been (and he could guess well enough) and started on toward the camp.

The other men were all busy, carefully busy and carefully avoiding the tall, strongly built person in trousers and man’s shirt who sat motionless on a log, back toward him. Gird paused to look at her. From that distance, in that garb, she looked like a boy, her short dark hair (she had cut her hair!) rumpled, her big hands busy with a knife on a stick of wood. What was she whittling? When had she learned to whittle—or had she known, and he not known it?

He came toward her; the other men’s glances at him alerted her, and she turned, then stood. She stood very straight, as she had when expecting punishment in childhood—she had been the one of his children most likely to defy him. Now he could see the ruin that blow had made of her beauty, a scar worse than her mother’s, puckering the corner of her mouth. Her jaw had been broken, by the unevenness of it now. Her eyes held nothing he had seen before, in her years as child and maid and young wife. They might have been stones, for all the softness in them.

He could not bear it. He could not bear it that his daughter, his (he could admit it to himself) favorite, could look at him so. “Rahi—” he began. Then he found himself reaching for her, sweeping her into his hug despite her tension when she felt his hands. She stiffened, pushed him back, then stood passively. That was worse. He held her off, searching her face for some part of the girl who had been. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think—”

“I came to stay,” she said, as if it were a ritual she had memorized. “I came to fight. I am strong. I have no—no family ties.”

“Rahi—!” He was appalled. But she went on.

“No child, no husband, nothing—but the strength of my body, the skill of my hands. I can be useful, and I can fight.”

The other men had vanished, into the trees. Gird did not blame them; he was grateful for their tact. He was also sure they were listening avidly from behind every clump of leaves.

“I can’t marry again,” Rahi went on. “I’m—too noticeable. Imagine going before a steward or bailiff. And the healers say that fever may have made me barren, as well as killing my—the—child. And I don’t want to marry again. I want to do something—” She snapped the stick she’d been whittling, and flung the pieces away. “Something to end this, so no other young wife will see her husband die as I did, and then have it be his wrongdoing—” She looked up at Gird, eyes suddenly full of tears. “I have to do this, Gird, here or somewhere else.”

She had not called him Da, or the more formal father: she had called him Gird, like any of his men. That was another pain, even closer to the deep center of his heart where father and child were bound in ancient ties. He blinked back his own tears, and brushed away those that had run down his cheeks. His beard was wetter than he expected.

He tried to stay calm. “Rahi, love, we can’t have women here, in the camps. Not to fight—and it’s not fair otherwise. It’s not safe.”

“Was I safe tending my own hearth at home?” she asked bitterly. “Is any woman safe? Are we safer when the strongest men are off in the woods playing soldier?” Gird grasped at the weak end of that.

“That’s going to change; I thought of a way for men to learn soldiering in the villages.” He explained quickly, before she could argue, and when he finished she was nodding. “So you see—” he said, easing into it.

“I see,” she interrupted. “I see that the men will get some training, and then you’ll take them away to a battle, leaving the women unprotected.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“That’s what it will be. You know that. Remember, years ago, when you told me I was as good as another son? After Calis died? I know many girls aren’t that strong—but not all men are as strong as you, yet you’ve got Pidi here—little Pidi that I can sling over my shoulder—and you think I can’t—”

“It’s not just strength. You know that.” Gird was sweating; he could feel it trickling down his ribs, and his hands were slick with it. “What about—you know—all those women things—”

Rahi stared at him a moment, and then snorted. A chuckle fought its way up, and she was suddenly convulsed with laughter. “Oh, Da—oh, Lady’s grace, it still hurts when I laugh, but—You mean you never knew?”

“Knew what?” He could not imagine what she thought was funny about the problems having women in camp could bring.

Her hand waved, vaguely, as she tried to stop laughing, and hiccuped instead. “Mother never told you? All those years and you thought—” she shook her head, laughing again. Finally, eyes streaming tears, she regained control. Now, flushed from laughter, she looked like his daughter again, like her mother—all the warmth and laughter that Mali had brought into his life regained. Gird stared at her, halfway between anger and delight. She took a long breath, with her hand to her side, and explained “Da, women have ways—herbs, brews—we’re not like cows, you know. We’re people; we understand our bodies. If it’s a bad time—and I agree, fighting a war would be a bad time—we take care of it and don’t make a mess. I can’t tell you; it’s our knowledge.”

“But Issa—”

“Oh, Issa!” Rahi shook her cropped hair. “It doesn’t work for some women, or they won’t bother—that kind wouldn’t want to learn soldiering anyway.” She chuckled softly, a gentler sound. “I thought I would never laugh again, and here the first time I see you, I disgrace myself—”

“It’s no disgrace to laugh,” Gird said. He wanted to reach for her again, hug her, stroke her hair as he had when she was a small child. But she was a woman, and a woman who had suffered too much to be treated as a child. “Even after sorrow—it comes, sometimes, when no one expects it.”

Rahi nodded. “Mother used to say it was the Lady’s way of making it bearable. Tears in joy, laughter in sorrow, she said, were a sign of the Lady’s presence.” She reached out to him, her hand almost as large as his own, and patted his shoulder. “There—now I’ve grieved, and laughed, and called you Da again, which I said would not do, were I your soldier. But I’m staying.”

And from that decision he could not budge her, not then nor that night nor the next day. Their argument was conducted in the spurious privacy of the camp, with everyone not listening. Between bouts, Rahi demonstrated her usual competence, fitting her contributions of work and skill in effortlessly. Gird began to notice covert grins, sidelong sly looks at her, at him. The skin on the back of his neck itched constantly from being looked at. His ears felt sunburnt. Rahi did not take part in the drill sessions, but she was clearly watching and learning the commands.

After the afternoon’s stick drill, Ivis lingered when the others dispersed to their assigned groups. “Your daughter—” he said, his eyes down.

“Yes.” Gird bit it off. He was going to have to talk about it, without having solved it, and it could do nothing but harm.

“You told us.”

“Yes.” He’d forgotten that, by this time. He looked at Ivis, who was staring past his shoulder. Gird resisted the temptation to look around—was Ivis looking at Rahi?

“She’s a lot like you,” Ivis said.

“She’s—what?”

“Like you. Gets things done. Strong—more than one way.”

Gird grunted. He could see where this was leading, and he didn’t like it. Had Rahi been talking to them behind his back?

“She hasn’t said anything, but we couldn’t help hearing a little . . .”

Gird squinted up at the bright sky showing between the leaves, and asked himself why Mali hadn’t had all boys. Life would have been a lot simpler. “She wants to stay; you all know that. She can’t. She’s stubborn, like her mother.” And me, his mind insisted silently. “Stubborn on both sides,” he admitted aloud. “But it’s impossible.”

Ivis dug a toe into the dirt and made a line. “She’s not like most women.”

Gird snorted. “She’s like all women. Wants her way, and expects to get it. But with Rahi, it’s even more so. Her next older brothers died, in a plague. That may have been it, though Mali—my wife—she was a strongminded woman too.” As if she were alive again, he heard her voice in his ear, as she had warned him that first night at the gathering. I will not guard my tongue for any man, she’d said, and she’d kept that vow. Along with all the others. And had taught Rahi the same, if teaching had anything to do with what was born in the blood. He could feel his own blood contending. If only Rahi had been his son—but then it might have been Rahi dead, and his (her?) wife left. Gird shook his head. That was too complicated; what he had was complicated enough. How could the men respect a leader who couldn’t make his daughter obey?

“We think she’s earned it—if she can, if she’s strong enough—”

“Strong enough! Of course she’s strong enough; that’s not the point.”

Ivis cleared his throat noisily. “Gird—it is the point. To us, anyway. You’ve worried about some of the men here having the strength to lead, or the courage when it comes to a real fight. She’s—she’s your daughter, and we know what happened. She should be here.”

Gird stared at him. “You think that? But if I let her—what about others?”

Ivis cleared his throat again. “The—the one thing I did hear her say, to Pidi, was that women could train at home too. In the bartons.”

In the bartons I don’t have yet, Gird thought furiously. In the bartons that are safe—if they are safe—only because the men always gather in the bartons. Again a memory of Mali forced itself into his consciousness, the day of their wedding when she had faced the ridiculous ceremonies with no embarrassment whatever. Were women really just humoring men with all that squealing and shyness? Could they—he had no doubts about Rahi, who could probably ride wild horses if the chance occurred—could other women really learn to fight, use weapons, kill—alongside men?

Ivis was watching his face with a wary expression. “She said I shouldn’t say anything to you,” he said.

Gird glared at him. “I thought you said you hadn’t talked to her!”

“I haven’t. I would have, but she wouldn’t. Said it was up to you and her to work out, and I should stay out of it.”

“Giving you orders, eh?” For some reason that amused him; he could feel Rahi’s resentment of someone’s interference, her fierce determination to convince Gird by herself.

Ivis grinned, catching the change in Gird’s mood. “You notice I didn’t obey.”

“So how many of them agree with you?”

Ivis relaxed still more. “I didn’t talk to all, but all I asked agreed that they would let her stay.”

Gird muttered one of the old guards’ curses he hadn’t used in years; Ivis clearly had never heard it and didn’t understand. “Go away, then. I want to talk to her.” Ivis vanished, as if whisked away by magic. Gird looked around for Rahi. There she was, grinding grain as placidly as any housewife by her hearth. He had a sudden sinking feeling, as if a hole had opened in his chest, and let his heart fall out on the ground. Could he possibly be about to do what he was going to do? He swallowed against the feeling, and called her. She looked up, smiled, and came to him. He noticed that she had, even in that moment, scooped the ground meal into a bowl, and laid another atop it to keep out dirt.

This time he looked her over as if she were a real recruit. Within a finger of his height, broad shouldered, as Mali had been. Thin, from the fever, but with strength in her arms. The scar down her face made her too distinctive to send into a village or town—but she could still see out of both eyes, and had two good arms and legs. He had men with less. She stood there calmly, not arguing. Not intending to change her mind, either; he could feel the force of that determination as if it were heat from a fire.

“I don’t think you understand,” he said without preamble, “how hard it is for me. I’ve already seen you lying at my feet in a pool of blood. I don’t think I can stand seeing that again.”

Her face paled. “You don’t understand how hard it is for me,” she said. “I lost that blood, lost my husband, lost my child, and could not strike even one good blow to stop it. I know I cannot stand that—I will not be that helpless again. Not ever. Either you teach me, or—I don’t know, but I’ll learn somehow.”

“And die somewhere I never know,” Gird sighed, near tears again. “And that will be my fault, as it was my fault for not protecting you before. You give me a hard choice, Rahi.” She opened her mouth, but he shook his head. “You would say, as your mother said often enough, that it is a world of hard choices. All right. I give in, on this one thing. But if this kills you, Rahi, make sure it is not because you failed to learn what I could teach.”

If she felt triumph, she did not show it. Only in the corner of her eye, the little wrinkle twitched, whether from surprise or delight, he could not tell, and would not ask.

“And you were right,” he went on, “to call me ‘Gird’ when you first came. If you would be a soldier, then it is for that you are here, and not as my daughter.”

She nodded, gravely. “Yes, Gird.”

“And if you—if you need—” Now her eyes crinkled in what could only be laughter. Gird glared at her. “Dammit—!”

“Gird, if I cannot stay as a soldier, for some reason, I will tell you at once, and go. But it is not likely, even without what I know of herbs: the healer said so.”

His arms ached to hold her, comfort her, restore to her the promises of her childhood—the promises all children should have. But it was too late for that. She looked content with what life had left her; he had no choice now himself. Her future was no more doubtful than his—and, he thought sourly, the only doubt was when they’d be strung on the spikes, not if.

But when she returned to grinding, and he saw by the glances passed around the campsite that everyone understood, and accepted his decision (he could not believe many of them actually approved) he was able to return to planning with a lighter heart. If he could establish training in the villages, bartons full of trained men—his mind put other women in that picture, and he hastily blanked them out—in time they would outnumber the lords and their guards. Would any of the guards come over? They had come from peasant ranks. If they saw their friends and family actually fighting, would that make a difference? He let himself imagine a series of battles in which the peasants stood their ground, in drill array, using their sticks and shovels, pushing back the guard and then the lords themselves. Of course, he still didn’t know whether the sticks would work as he saw them in his head.

He sighed. Time to start the next level of training. He had in mind straw-stuffed dummies tied onto logs, to simulate horsemen. It would help if he’d ever actually ridden a horse, and knew in his own body how firmly a horseman could sit. He’d seen men bucked off—he remembered trying to ride calves—but that was not like a soldier on horseback firmly in the saddle. Still, it ought to work. If they could unseat horsemen, they could ambush mounted patrols. Even more important, if they could unseat horsemen—even one horseman—even a straw dummy tied to a log—it might convince the farmers in their villages that it was worthwhile spending all those hours learning to drill and use a stick.

Making the straw dummy was quick work, in the hot days of tall grass and long afternoons. Cob suggested weighting the body with rocks; Triga had the even better suggestion of seating a real person on the log, and pulling him off slowly—to see how a person felt—and then making the dummy feel the same. That turned into several days of experiment, with one after another trying to keep his seat on the log with friends pushing and pulling from one or both sides. Gird took a turn, wondering if it felt anything like riding a real horse, or if it could be a way to learn. It was easy to wrap his long legs around the log and hang on, but hard to keep his balance when someone yanked his arm. After his second fall, he watched Ivis on the log.

“We don’t need the straw dummy,” he said, “As long as we pad the ends of our sticks, and remember that this one is a friend. Whoever’s up can tell us which moves are hardest to counter.”

The rider—Ivis, then others—was equipped with a reed “sword” and laid about vigorously to simulate resistance. Slowly at first, then with increasing confidence and speed, they all learned where to strike a rider to throw him off balance. The game became so popular that Gird had to remind them that there were other ways—and enemies—to fight, or they would have spent all their time knocking one another off logs.

Rahi, in the meantime, had merged almost invisibly into the troop. Gird was acutely aware of her presence for the first few days; then he went off to the other camp, and when he returned it was as if she had always been there—but as a soldier, not his daughter. She did not avoid him, exactly, but she did not spend her free time with Pidi, or with Gird, and even seemed to steer clear of Fori. She had her place in drill, and made no more than the usual beginner’s mistakes. As he would have expected, she learned fast. Gird waited for something to go wrong, but nothing did.

It was now nearing harvest. After harvest the field-fee collectors would be out; Gird wanted to introduce his barton idea to at least a few villages before then. For that he needed seasoned older men, men the farmers might trust as similar to themselves. They had to be proficient in the drill (although he didn’t expect them to teach the farmers much in the short time until harvest—but they had to impress them.) And—perhaps most important—they had to be reliably close-mouthed. He himself would go, of course. Ivis had developed into a trusted lieutenant, as had Cob. Diamod was known in five or six villages as a Stone Circle organizer. Felis, who might have been another possibility, had broken his wrist on his last “ride” as a target, and would not be fit until after harvest.

After long discussions, Gird chose four villages to test his idea: Fireoak, Harrow (where Felis’s group had supporters), Whitetree, where Ivis’s brother lived, and Hardshallows. Cob and a man from Felis’s group went to Harrow, Ivis to his brother, Gird to Fireoak, and Diamod to Hardshallows. They were to spend no more than two nights in the village, and talk to no more than five men.

Chapter Fourteen

Coming into Fireoak on a late summer day, as an active rebel organizer, was very different from leaving it as a fugitive who had only the ghost of an idea for rebellion. The two of them joined a stream of workers coming in from the fields: harvest markers, who went into the fields before harvest to make sure the boundary stones didn’t roll an armspan one way or the other—herders prodding slow-moving cows toward home and milking time. Gird flared his nostrils, enjoying the scent of cow. He had never understood those who thought cows stank. Pigs stank; dogs stank; even people—but cows had a rich, joyful scent, as befitted animals who lived on fresh grass and herbs. Their droppings had never disgusted him. Someone—he could not right then remember who—had told him once that a man should keep only those animals whose smells were pleasant to him.

The Fireoak farmers and herdsmen knew perfectly well the two were outlanders, but they knew Diamod and had heard of Gird.

They sauntered down the lane, dusty and brown as the farmers with them, and no one spoke to them. Slow, traditional talk rolled by: harvest chances, taxes, a remedy for stiff ankles followed by a joke about the cause, comments on cows and weather and the uncommon number of rabbits that summer—a joke directed at Gird, which he well understood and knew better than to answer.

“Pop up and down everywhere, they do,” someone said a second time, to see if he would rise to the bait. “Got so common, we might think they’s people.”

Then the village, with its familiar cottages, the wattle fences between smallgardens, the walls of bartons rising behind. It was at once strange and the same: so like his own village, and yet not his village—and his village was not his village. Gird sniffed: bread, cheese, the vegetables they had not yet planted for the camps, ale somewhere—his mouth watered. Children wandered about, too thin but not yet starving, noticing the strangers but warned away from saying anything by quick gestures from their elders.

He would have passed Mali’s brother’s cottage, if Diamod had not jabbed him in the ribs. It looked different by daylight, from the front. He remembered Rahi’s harsh feverish breathing in the barton out back, the gray light of dawn when he’d eased out the gate into the field beyond. Now he saw a low fence enclosing a ragged smallgarden, the beaten path to the front door. And in the door, a thin girl, yellowhaired, who held one crooked arm as if it pained her. Her face whitened, and she ducked inside. Gird turned to see Diamod wink before he walked on.

Gird came to the door, stepped out of his boots, and said “Girnis?”

Mali’s brother’s wife, a face he barely remembered from that one night, said “You’re Gird? Gods above, what do you mean—come in, don’t stand there!” Gird picked up his boots and ducked beneath the low lintel. It was dark inside, and would have been cool if not for the fire on the hearth. By that flickering light, Gird could see Girnis standing flat against the wall between a loom and a wheel.

“Is—is Rahi—?”

“She’s alive, and well, and stubborn as ever.” Gird looked at the wife, whose lips were folded together. What had he walked into? He had not asked Rahi all that had happened here, but perhaps he should have.

“I thought—” the woman began, then closed her mouth, and twisted her hands, and finally said again “I thought you were leaving Girnis with us. To be ours.”

“I did,” said Gird, surprised. “I said so; I was grateful.”

She looked at him hard, then her mouth relaxed a little. “You didn’t come to take her?”

“Of course not! Why would you think—”

“Raheli left. When she didn’t come back, we thought she was with you, or dead—we didn’t hear of anyone being killed. And then we thought, if you wanted her, you might want Girnis, but she’s—”

“She’s not Rahi.” She was the child of Mali’s illness, the twin that lived, but never as vigorous as a singleton. “I wouldn’t take her. Girnis, let me see you.”

Girnis came to him, shyly but now unalarmed. Her arm had healed a little crooked—not so bad, when she held it out. But she stood with it up, as if it were still in its bindings, and it was thinner than the other.

“Does it still hurt you?” he asked. She nodded.

“Mother Fera—” she glanced toward the woman, “—says I should move it more, but the joint hurts, Da, when I try.”

“Let me feel.” Gird took her arm, conscious of its thinness, and the faint tremor—nervousness? pain?—that met his touch. He bent and straightened it slowly, stopping when he met resistance and heard her indrawn breath. He could feel nothing wrong but stiffness, but he was not a healer. “I’m sure your aunt has tried heat,” he said, “and herb poultices. I think myself it would be good to move it more. Sometimes things hurt when they’re healing. A few times a day, anyway—I think you could do that.” She nodded, solemnly. She was quiet; she had always been quiet, the quietest of his children, but not slow. Just quiet, in a house full of noisy ones.

The woman had moved nearer; she looked less alarmed. “We’ve had an offer for her,” she said. “She has a mixed parrion, she says?”

Gird nodded. “Yes. She has Mali’s parrion of herbcraft, and Issa’s—my brother’s wife’s—parrion of embroidery. Issa was a weaver, as well, but died before Girnis learned enough.”

“I am a weaver,” the woman said. “I can teach her, if her arm strengthens. But—will you let us arrange the marriage?”

“Of course. I told you—if you in your kindness will have her, she is your daughter, and yours is the right to speak for or against.”

He heard boots in the barton, and stiffened, but the woman called through the house: “Gird’s here. It’s all right.”

After that awkwardness, he was surprised to find that Mali’s brother was enthusiastic about the possibility of training within the village.

“Of course, the bartons,” he said. “You’re right, Gird, and I don’t know why we hadn’t thought of it before. Had no one to teach us, I suppose. I know—let me think—I know two hands of men who would join here, at once. What about weapons?”

“Drill first, then weapons,” said Gird. He and Barin were sitting on the cool stones of the barton, drinking ale to celebrate. He could feel a delicate haze leaching the tiredness from his bones.

“What about women?” asked Barin.

“Mmm?”

“You’ve got Rahi now. I’m Mali’s brother, after all; I remember what she was like and how relieved the family was when you offered for her. Will you take women like that in?”

Gird shrugged. “I would myself, but I can’t force another group to do it. What about you?”

“I don’t like the thought of seeing my wife—but after all, she could be cut down for no reason, as Rahi was. Most of them won’t want to anyway, but for a few—why not?”

The following night, five other men visited Barin’s, presumably to finish an open barrel of ale before the beginning of harvest, when it was bad luck to have one. They talked village gossip until the stars were thick and white, then Gird spoke his piece. Less open than Barin, they still agreed it was a good idea. The longer they talked it over, the more they liked it—except that only two of them thought women should be allowed to join.

“They talk too much,” said one of the men. “Let them find out, and it’d be all over the village by dawn.”

Barin laughed. “And who was it let out the secret of Kinvit’s lover, last winter?”

The others burst into laughs; the man who had complained of women talking too much said “But it wasn’t my fault!” Gird chuckled. It was always the same; the loosest mouths complained that others gossiped. Their tales were always true, and if the wrong story got out, it was never their fault. Finally the man came around, laughing at himself. “All right,” he said. “I got drunk; I opened my mouth, and out fell Kinvit and Lia, doing what Kinvit and Lia had been doing since harvest. No nosy old granny could have done worse.” But he was still opposed to having women training in the village. Gird did not push him, letting Barin do most of the talking. They would all know, by now, about Raheli; they would all assume that Gird had a special reason for allowing women to fight. And that was perfectly true.

In the end, the men voted to organize a barton meeting, and gradually recruit new members. Gird promised to send someone—“It may not be me,” he pointed out—to train them. “Consider him a sergeant,” he said at first, but even in starlight he could see the dislike they had for that name, associated as it was with the lords’ tyranny. “What would you call him, then?”

They talked back and forth, suggesting and arguing, until one of them said “We’re like a bunch of cattle milling in a pen, waiting for the herdsmarshal to set us on our way.”

“Marshal!” said Barin, smacking his leg with his fist. “That’s good—and it’s not a word we would fear to have overheard. Marshal. And the rest of us are—”

“Yeomen,” said Gird. “That covers all of us, farmers and craftsmen alike. Any but lords. And no one will ever know, from talk of it, what it is.”

“I do like that,” Barin said. “The yeomen and the marshal meet in the barton tonight. As long as we need only those two ranks—”

“But we’ve got another!” It had come to Gird in another of those flashes of insight. “Marshal—that’s one of us traveling, coming to train you. But even in the village, you’ll need a leader—that’s the yeoman-marshal. And then yeoman for everyone else.”

“And someday—” Barin said. He didn’t have to finish. They all drained the last of their ale, and stamped their feet in agreement. Gird could see it—the flow of men out to the Stone Circle, to learn. The flow back in, to train those in the bartons . . . and back out, to the fight they all knew must come, and then back, to take up their peaceful lives. As natural as breathing, or the cycle of seasons. He knew from experience that ale could make things seem simpler than they were in morning’s light, but this was going to work.

Work began in earnest when he returned to the camp and conferred with the others who had gone out. All the villages had shown an interest—not surprising, since they had talked to men already known to be Stone Circle sympathizers. Two of the others had noticed that the villagers shied from the usual military rank terms of sergeant and captain, but they had not come up with alternatives. They nodded when Gird told them about marshal, yeoman-marshal, and yeoman.

“That’ll do,” said Ivis. “They won’t mind that—it’s nothing like the guards. Best of all, we can talk about it in front of anyone—even a guard sergeant—and he won’t know what it is.” Gird nodded.

“They thought of that, too.”

“Will we all be marshals?” asked Cob. “I mean, when we’re drilling here, that’s going be too confusing.”

“None of us are marshals yet,” Gird said. “And some of us may be better than others at teaching. Besides, we still don’t know enough.” In his mind, the wheel of the year turned, grinding the moments away. How long before the first snowfall? Before full winter? Four bartons to train, this winter—maybe more. “After harvest,” he said, “we need to bring one man from each village here, to drill with us, and see how the larger units work. When the taxes are paid, no one takes much notice if someone travels to visit relatives. In the meantime, our own harvest: I hear the fieldfees are up again, and we cannot starve our allies.”

For the next few hands of days, they drilled only briefly, spending most of their time gathering food and preparing it for storage. No casual nutting and berrying, this time, but a planned harvest of the woods and fields, that must be done before the lords came to hunt, in the days after the fieldfees were paid. Gird had planned food storage sites both in and away from the camps, so that if one were found and destroyed, others would be safe. They could not hunt, and risk foresters preparing for the lords’ visits seeing their smoke or smelling the blood, but they could gather fruit, tubers, berries, and stow them away. Into storage pits lined with rock went redroots and onions: their own harvest had been abundant. Other roots and tubers, bulbs and nuts, were stored with them, along with apples and plums and dried berries, bundles of herbs, strips of necessary barks. Their own baskets stored grain as well, harvested from the edges of common pastures, along streambanks, and in Triga’s bog. Gird moved from place to place, checking the growing stores, and trying to foresee what hazards they must survive.

After harvest, the lords would come to hunt the large wood; Gird moved everyone to the tangle of hills where Felis’s group had lived, and the only game worth hunting was wild boar. If they stayed out of the pickoak scrub, living uncomfortably in the lower brush, they should avoid the occasional hunting party with a taste for pig. The men grumbled, but only slightly. Gird found work for them even in the chest-high thickets of brush.

“We might need to come this way and hide, and it would be good to have paths they can’t see from the opposite hill.” So his troop crawled and twisted through the thick growth, hacking out paths wider than the rabbit-trails they found. Rahi sniffed the hacked ends of the scrub, and said she thought some of these were medicinal, stunted by soil or dryness. She began making a collection of twigs, bark, roots, and brewed a variety of pungent bitter concoctions which she insisted he taste. They all made his tongue rough up in furrows; they tasted as if they ought to do something good. One made him sweat profusely.

At last Ivis’s forester friends sent word that their duke and his friends had returned to the city; the forest was theirs for the winter. By this time the autumn rains were beginning, turning their trails to cold gray mud. Gird wished he had a stone cottage, with a great roaring hearth; his knees ached constantly. Instead, he had the three main campsites he’d found for winter, two backed into the south face of a hill, and one deep in a grove of cedars and pines. His favorite had a clean-running creek, small but adequate to their needs, and the surrounding trees had all dropped their leaves, letting in the low winter sunlight. The other south-facing camp had a larger stream, but he was somewhat worried about floods, come spring. Even in the slower autumn rains, they had to cross the stream on fallen logs. The men called that one Big Creek, and the other Sunbright; the most secluded campsite they called Cedars.

No one grumbled when he insisted they go right on working, rather than huddle in the first shelter they could contrive. He did not know if they were learning to think ahead, or if they simply accepted his orders. But wet and cold as it was now, winter could only be worse. The shelters he had planned went up quickly: wattle frames for side and roof, thatched with whatever they could find, mostly wild grass. Gird realized, as they wrestled with the grass between rains, that he should have had them out scything it earlier. Next year, he thought. And by then he would need another scythe or two. And some sickles. They smeared mud on the insides of the walls. Triga suggested another plan: poles braced against a tree, lashed together, and then wattle woven to make a circular peaked shelter. After building a couple like this, he admitted that it took more work, and gave less interior room, but the two they had made a welcome change, like extra rooms, during that winter.

The newly designated yeomen marshals arrived for their training while this was still going on; Gird had to stop for a couple of days to give them intensive training. But they were almost as impressed with the troop’s camp organization as with the drill. This, in turn, helped convince the last doubters among his soldiers that such organization was important. If it could impress strangers, then it was not just a matter of comfort.

The yeomen marshals stayed a hand of days; on the last day, Gird discussed with them the way they’d organize and train during the winter.

“By spring,” he said, “I’d like to have your yeomen ready to drill with another barton. Someday we’ll have to have bartons able to come together quickly.”

“What about recruiting new bartons?” asked the yeoman-marshal from Hardshallows. “I know you wouldn’t want to risk it in your old village—the steward, I hear, is still furious about you, and the men who left after you—but we’re less than a day’s walk from Hawkridge to the west, and not much more from Millburh, down our own stream.”

Gird had hoped no one would suggest that yet; he had wanted to be sure the barton idea would work before starting more. But he could not actually stop them—these were not his men yet—all he could do was make them sneaky, if they’d already decided. In the pause, while he tried to think how to answer, Barin from Fireoak spoke up.

“I think we should wait until we have at least two—maybe three—hands of yeomen, all drilling well. How else could we show them what we mean? And if—I don’t mean to be illwishing, but if this doesn’t work—if we find that our neighbors do tell the lords’ men, then better only a few bartons die, than many.”

Gird nodded, glad he hadn’t had to say it himself. “Barin’s right, I think. If your barton grows and prospers, and you’re sure it’s safe, then I will not tell you not to tell the next village. But we’re like a man starting a journey with a heavy load: it’s better to take a few slow steps, and be sure it’s balanced and will hold, than to set off at a run and have the whole thing fall apart.” His hands mimed the falling load, and they all laughed. “One village at a time. I think myself it would be better if only one in each barton knew the name of the yeoman marshal in other bartons.”

“But if he dies?”

“Each of you tell one of your yeomen—not someone you usually work in the field with—how to contact us, here. And let us know the name of that person. Later, everyone will know everyone, but for now, as Barin said, if someone tells, it’s better that only a few die.”

When the yeoman marshals had left, Gird and his troop used the hand of days between the last of the autumn rains and the first of the snows to transport and stow the food and supplies the villages had given them, cut and haul wood for their fires, and add such refinements to their shelters as time and ingenuity allowed. When that first bank of blue cloud rolled across, cutting off the slanting autumn sun, and dropping the temperature, Gird felt that they were as well prepared for winter as possible.

This did not mean he had thought of everything. His own well, in the foreyard of his cottage, froze only in the bitterest winters, and only after midwinter. The clear-running creek that was one of the reasons for choosing Sunbright froze solid before Midwinter, and they must either melt snow and ice for water, or carry it (a cold, heavy load that sometimes froze before they got it home) from a spring some distance away. He had thought to dig the jacks trenches ahead, before the ground froze, but had not realized that the “loose” dirt from them would freeze, and have to be chopped into chunks to fill the trench.

Problems had the advantage of helping Gird keep everyone busy. In the villages, winter boredom led to quarrels and occasional fights. Here, such dissension could be fatal. So his four tally groups had assigned chores, and whenever the weather allowed, Gird chivvied everyone out for a march or drill practice. He divided the groups slightly differently. One brought food from storage, and another cooked it, while the camp chores group had to maintain the fire, the jacks, and the supply of water. The tool groups were set to repairing tools broken or chipped, and to making useful items for the camps. One of the things the villages had sent (at Gird’s request) was yarn; Rahi taught several of the men to knit, using smooth-polished twigs as needles. Knitting was an unusual parrion; she had had it from Mali’s brother’s wife, in the time she lived there, and liked it much better than weaving.

Midwinter was a different kind of problem. Gird had always known when Midwinter was coming because the village headman said so. Here, he realized, everyone thought of him as headman, and he should know when to celebrate Midwinter. He looked up, at a heavy gray sky. The days were still getting shorter, so it wasn’t Midwinter yet. He felt that it would come in a hand or two of days, but he did not know when it would be, or how to find out. But missing the Midwinter celebration was unthinkable.

He asked the others. Most thought it would be “soon” but no one had an exact date. Would it matter? At that thought, a colder chill ran down his neck. Of course it mattered; Midwinter and Midsummer were the ends of the axle on which the year turned. He had to know. He had to find out. Now that the men knew he did not know, they were looking at him nervously.

“How did you find out last year?” he finally thought of asking Ivis.

Ivis flushed. “Last year—well—we all went into one village or another, near Midwinter, and celebrated there.” And before Gird could decide to do the same, he said, “I don’t think we can, this year—we’re too many.”

“True, but we can ask.” Ivis’ village was too far away, across the wood, but one of them could make it to Fireoak and back. To Gird’s surprise, Fori asked to go.

“I can stay with Barin, and ask about Girnis. And the barton.”

Gird nodded. “Good—but be sure you’re back before Midwinter.”

Fori set off the next morning with a sack of food and everyone’s prayers. Gird watched all the faces staring after him, and said, “Since you’re all so glad to be outside, get your sticks.” A general groan, but not so dismal as he’d expected.

Stick drill had progressed a little farther. Felis, once his arm healed, was able to demonstrate what he had learned of swordsmanship. Gird suspected it wasn’t much, but he himself had never gotten that far. One thing he did know was the length of swords Kelaive’s guards had used. He asked the others; the duke, Ivis said, carried a longer sword, but no longer than from waist to ground. He had seen him standing with its tip resting on the ground. So, Gird thought, a sword could have a blade that long, or shorter. He asked his one-armed smith, who mentioned curved blades and broad-bladed swords, but agreed on length. That meant that a longer stick could fend off a sword—not fence with it, to lose chips as the sword chopped—but if the stick could hold the swordsman back, the sword could not harm the person with the stick.

It seemed reasonable, but they had to test it. Slowly, Gird insisted. Carefully. No more broken bones, if possible. Felis took those of his original group who had learned the most about swords, and these faced Gird, Cob, and a few others Gird thought he could trust to stay calm.

The sticks were nowhere near spear length, but about the length a man would choose as a walking staff, or for guiding cattle. So far they were not all the same length, although a broad hand would cover the difference. Gird had watched them in use over the past season, noticing carefully what went wrong most often, when the sticks clashed in ranks, which grips did not hold. Now, with Felis well again, they would see. He felt a little silly, standing there with a real stick facing an imaginary sword, but what else could they do?

Felis waggled his wooden “sword” and swiped at Gird. Gird lowered his stick, and pointed it at Felis, who sliced at it. Before the “sword” struck, Gird jabbed the stick at Felis’s face. Felis jerked back, and his sword stroke went wild.

“Wait,” said Felis. “Try that again, slower.” It would not be slow in battle, but they were only learning. Gird nodded, let Felis begin his sideways swipe with the sword, and then jabbed again. Again Felis jerked his head back, and this time, while he was still off balance, Gird jabbed again, and got him in the chest, gently. Felis grunted, then straightened. “I can’t—I think I’m just not good enough—but if you keep poking that at my eyes—I have to back up.”

“Let Cob and Arvan try it,” said Gird, stepping back, Arvan advanced with his “sword” and very little enthusiasm, to meet Cob. Here Cob was the shorter by a head, yet with the length of his stick he could force Arvan off balance.

“It’s too easy,” said Felis, scratching his thick red beard. “These sticks we’re using for swords don’t have the weight of a real weapon. If someone got a blow in, it would jar your stick aside—”

“But could they?” Arvan was frowning. “Cob, just hold it still—let me try.” He swung hard at the stick, and managed to bat it aside, but it swung back on rebound, and Cob needed little force to control it.

“But suppose there were more than one swordsman,” Felis said. “If you have more than one coming in, you can’t just poke one. The other one will poke you.”

“That’s what the formation is for,” Gird said. “If it works.” This time he and Cob lined up facing Felis and Arvan. When they lowered their sticks, and jabbed, the two “swordsmen” found themselves giving ground, flailing uselessly with their shorter weapons.

“Just remember,” Felis said, “that even an accidental blow with a sword is going to take chips off that stick. It won’t last forever. Can you do real damage with it?”

“I don’t know.” Gird tapped him in the chest again. “If I did that much harder, you might fall down; I might even break your breastbone, or a rib.”

“You’ll have to swing it to knock someone flat, most times.” Triga, watching, entered the discussion. “And if you swing it, that gives time for a fast swordsman to slip in and kill you.”

“And if you swing it,” Felis pointed out, “it can foul on someone else’s stick who’s fighting another opponent.”

“Mmmph. I thought we could try this—hold still, now, I won’t really hit you hard.” Gird jabbed at Felis’s face, then tapped his chest, and then slid his bands down to swing the stick like a flail. But Arvan chose that moment to dart in and put his “sword” to Gird’s neck.

“Like that,” Felis said, grinning at Arvan and Gird both. Gird glowered at Cob.

“And where were you, partner?”

Cob looked rueful. “Standing watching you, when I should have been watching Arvan. We have more to learn, yeomen.”

“We could whittle a point on these sticks, and fire-harden it,” said Triga.

“It’s still not going to go through any kind of armor. Even if it did, it would catch there, and I’d be standing there with a dead soldier on the end of my weapon, looking foolish.” Gird scratched his beard vigorously, as if that could clear his head. “I thought if we hit them in the chest hard enough—or in the belly—that would knock them down, maybe even out.”

“Hit them in the face—that makes ’em back up, and they’ll worry about losing an eye—”

“True, but—” Gird thought about that. “We need a way to kill them, or we’d be standing all day poking poles at them. I did think of some farm tools—the shovel, the mattock, the scythe—but they all have to be swung. And you’re saying, aren’t you, that anything we swing will be clumsier than a sword?”

Felis half-closed his eyes, and began swiping the air. Gird stared, then realized he was imagining himself swinging various farm implements. Gird tried to guess which, from Felis’s movements, but except for the sickle (a short swing, with a snap to the wrist) he could not be sure which was which. Felis opened his eyes, made a few passes with his “sword,” and grinned. “I think there’s a chance with a mattock—and even a scythe, though the grips would have to be moved around. But it wouldn’t be easy.”

Gird heaved a dramatic sigh. “None of this is easy. If it was easy, someone would’ve done it long ago.”

Rahi spoke, for the first time in a drill session. “What if two or three worked together? One with the stick, to force the swordsman’s attention, and one or two with weapons more likely to kill, but slower.”

“That’s fine, if we outnumber the enemy,” said Felis. “But in battle—”

“Wait,” said Gird. “That might work—and we had better outnumber them, Felis, facing steel with wood. Let’s try it.”

Felis shrugged, but stepped forward again. This time Rahi stood beside Gird with one of the sickles. She was on his left, but then looked at her sickle and quickly changed sides as Gird lunged at Felis. Felis backed, his attention necessarily on the stick in his face. When Rahi came forward, he tried to swing at her, but the pole caught him in the angle of neck and shoulder. Arvan swung at Rahi, but missed as Cob’s pole got him in the chest, and then poked again at his face. Rahi could easily dodge Felis’s wild strokes, and she swung, stopping just as the sickle tip hooked into his side. Then, slow for the exercise, but smoothly, she swung back, pivoting, to come forward again and take Arvan in the belly. They all stopped and stood up.

“It works in slow motion,” said Felis doubtfully. “And I don’t know how we’ll practice it fast, not without killing each other.”

“We still need someone with a stick for every swordsman.” Gird scratched again, and stared at the stick. “And some behind with the other weapons, the killing weapons. Not that the sticks can’t kill. But there’s something I’m not seeing. Anyone else?”

“Well—you ever see that old-style stickfighting, on fair days?” asked Cob.

“No—the only fair-day I ever went to had one wrestler not as good as you, and a man who could throw knives.”

“They started it like a dance,” Cob said. “One man tapping a drum, and them tapping the sticks together. It was pretty, like watching horses in a field, tappity-tap. Then they started going faster, and faster, and about then I realized it was a kind of fighting. I’d have learned more, only I was there to make a few crabs wrestling, and my friends had bet on me. I asked one of them later, and he said it was old, something our great-great-grand-das would have known about.”

“Do you remember any of it?”

“Only the first bits, the slow part. But it’d be good practice, anyway. Get us used to the feel of something hitting the sticks.”

It took longer than Gird would have expected before he could match Cob’s pattern; his knuckles felt as if he’d hit them with hammers. And that was with both of them being careful. Triga, who’d been to the same fair, and thought he remembered the stickfighting very well, tried to start fast and ended up sucking his split knuckles ruefully. At least he wasn’t angry—but there had been no frogs to eat for days. Arvan picked up the movements quickly, as did Felis, but Padug, who had been Felis’s other star pupil at swordsmanship, was slower than Gird. By the time Fori came back, to announce that Midwinter Feast should be celebrated in eight days, most of them were still fumbling their way through this new drill.

Midwinter itself was the coldest and darkest Gird had ever known. No one was sick—Alyanya’s grace—but that meant no excuse for any fire whatever. And the rituals of Midwinter had always involved the whole family: each member had his or her assigned role. He had asked the men, and located an eldest son, youngest son, the oldest and youngest overall. Rahi had to take all the women’s roles; Gird hoped the gods would understand and accept their intent, and not demand the precision only a whole family could provide.

At dusk on the first night, all their fires were quenched, and the hearths brushed clean. Water, fire, ritual earth (though they had no garden or ploughland), each handled with due reverence—the icy air breathed with respect and affection both. Rahi, not surprisingly, remembered all the women’s verses: she had been, once, the youngest daughter, then the eldest, and with Mali’s death and her marriage, Alyanya’s representative in Gird’s home. Together, finally, hands cupped around symbolic light, they sang the Darksong. That was in the middle of the night, when Torre’s Necklace stood high overhead. From then until dawn, they huddled together, telling old tales of their childhoods, their fathers’ tales as far back as any could remember. Their breath steamed silver in the starlight, each speaker like a tiny chimney. Then—best of omens—a clear dawn to Midwinter Day, and Rahi set the circle pattern of twigs for the new fire. In a great circle, hand to hand, they watched her light it, on the lucky third spark.

They had their feast, as well, for Gird had hidden a comb of honey, and dripped it liberally over hearthcakes and grain mush. Besides that, they had deer, hunted safely long after the lords had gone back to their city. They feasted in comfort, around the roaring fires, and spent the second long night singing more songs than Gird had ever heard. All it lacked was ale; he missed the warmth in his throat and belly, though not the aching head when he woke.

The rest of that winter was hard, but not as hard as he’d feared. When the snowmelt began, with the myriad tinkling music of dripping icicles, they were all still healthy. No one had lost fingers or toes to the cold; no one had had lung fever.

Twice he’d been able to send men to the four original bartons, to check on their training. All had a full three hands or more in training; Hardshallows had five. And they were still recruiting, though cautiously. Fireoak had discovered a man who thought Kelaive would pay him for rebel names. He had changed his mind, Barin reported, when they explained it to him personally. Fori’s report of that explanation was fuller than Barin’s; the barton had expressed their opinion of him with force—the man would limp for awhile. Gird winced, but accepted it. Better one man beaten than many killed—or even one. He felt slightly better when he found, still later, that the one who had hit the man in the head with a pot was his wife, now an accepted barton member.

Hardshallows reported that it had indeed started a daughter barton, down in Millburh. Growing slowly, but Millburh had a resident guard post, almost a fort. They had to be careful. As the weather lifted, the barton in Ashy, Felis’s old village, sent word that it, too, had contacted another village: Three Springs, which had passed the word to two other vills in the same hearthing. As soon as the spring plowing was over, those bartons would be sending elected yeomen marshals to train with the main force.

It was all moving faster than Gird had expected. He still could not quite believe that he’d been away from his own home almost a year—and was alive, leading a growing number of disaffected peasants in what was clearly going to be an army. And yet they’d had no clashes with the lords, no trouble with any of the guard forces. It would be easy to be careless, moving through the green and fragrant woods of spring, with flowers starring the pastures beyond, with the birds carolling overhead.

We don’t have an army yet, he reminded himself firmly.

Chapter Fifteen

All that spring and summer, the movement spread, like ripples from a dropped stone. The Stone Circle began to become what it had always claimed to be, the center of a wider movement of rebellion. The first bartons ventured out of their villages to drill with Gird in the fields. Their yeomen marshals contacted Stone Circle supporters in other villages. Distant Stone Circle outlaws, living wild in the woods and hills, sent messengers to find out what was happening. Gird would not let any more stay with him; he knew they could not support more where they were. But he sent those he thought would make good teachers and leaders, both to new bartons and to outlaw groups. Gradually—sometimes painfully—he discovered which of his people could do that work, and which of the outlaw groups were honest rebels, and which were brigands.

He insisted that the groups he led provide as much of their own food as they could. That summer was even busier than the one before, as strangers came and went, learning and taking back what they’d learned, while the work of supporting his own troops still had to be done. He saw no end to it, the things he had to do, remember, foresee. But he noticed that some of his people were learning to think ahead for themselves, learning to think how something used one way for a lifetime could be useful for doing something else.

He heard, late that summer, that a distant barton had ambushed a lord’s taxman, and shook his head. “That’ll start us trouble,” he muttered.

Triga cocked an eyebrow at him. “You were hoping to have a war without trouble?”

“I was hoping to have a war when we were ready for it. Not in bits and pieces, here and there, where they have the advantage.”

“What I heard was the barton got the money, all of it, and killed the taxman and his two guards. Sounds to me like the barton had the advantage.”

“As long as they didn’t take anything that can be traced. Where can they spend those coins? And on what? I hope they’ve sense enough not to go to a smith. They start trying to buy weapons, and we’ll see trouble we haven’t thought of yet.” Gird doubled his own outposts and guards, expecting the worst. Sure enough, mounted patrols swept through the country, both in the wood and beyond in the hills. Gird’s men were very glad of their low paths through the scrub. They came back to find that one of their winter camps, Sunbright—deserted now for several hands of days—had been found. The patrol had destroyed the little they’d left behind, and they would certainly know where it was the next winter.

But the patrols, after that double raid, stayed away. From their contacts in the villages, they heard of more trouble—searches of cottages and barns for illegal weapons, men taken on suspicion of rebel activity and beaten or—in two cases—killed outright. Only one of these was actually a Stone Circle supporter, and he had not been a member of the local barton (being, as the yeoman marshal put it, too hotheaded to wear a hat without its catching fire.) These searches and arrests actually increased support for the rebels: after all, if you could be arrested for nothing, why not join?

Gird split his group into threes, and sent each one to a different area for the rest of the summer. They drilled together only a few times, and cautiously, with watchers on all the nearby heights. During harvest, and the lords’ favorite hunting time after it, more patrols came. But they’d been expected, and they found nothing but the same deserted camp they had found before. Once the winter storms began, Gird knew no more patrols would come. That winter was like the previous one, except that he began to try to keep accounts of his troop. He had begun with simple tallies, marked with wheatear, sickle, and flower, but he needed lists of all his people, and their villages, and the bartons and their yeoman marshals. Rahi brewed a brownish ink, but he had nothing like the smooth parchment the sergeant had had to write on. He struggled for awhile with the pale inner bark of a poplar, but finally gave up in disgust. He hated writing anyway.

That spring, the spirit of unrest made the whole countryside uneasy. Gird was not quite sure now how many bartons there were. The long winter months were ideal for conspiracy; each barton wanted to claim a daughter barton or two. That meant more than doubling, over the winter. Requests came in for Gird himself, or one of his senior instructors, to come inspect and drill not just one barton, but several. Gird and the others agreed on basic rules for drilling bartons together—how far the drillground must be from any village, what kinds of lookouts to set, what the signals would be, and what common commands all bartons should know. But he knew it was futile; in time, they would be discovered.

On those days of drill, Gird noticed first one blue shirt, then another. They had three at the camp now. Those who wore the blue held themselves proudly, aware of defiance. Gird insisted they have another shirt or cloak to throw over it, should an enemy show up. It would be hard enough to switch from drill to some innocuous activity, without having to explain away a forbidden blue shirt.

They could not, in these short sessions, teach all the new people all they themselves had learned. Gird felt the push and pull of time, the sense of things moving fast and slow at once: the lords could not long remain unaware of all that went on around them, but his people were not ready yet. They needed more time, more drill, and he needed to know more himself. When he thought of gathering all the bartons, in a full army, and meeting the lords with theirs, he was terrified.

Time ran out before he was satisfied with himself or the bartons, after Midsummer and well before harvest. He had gone to the gathering place for the sheep of five villages, so much like the pens where he had met Mali, but far to the north and east. Norwalk Sheepfold, they called it locally, the usual stone-walled shelter, back to the winter winds, with a fenced yard before it. It lay in the hollow of grassy hills, a half-morning’s walk from the nearest village, where no troops were stationed anyway.

As usual, Gird came to the meeting site before anyone else, met the shepherds who would be their lookouts, and gave his instructions. Then he squatted in the lee of the sheepfold, eating a chunk of hard cheese, to wait for the first barton to arrive.

When it came straggling along, hardly any two yeomen in step, and weapons every which way, Gird winced. He knew it had formed recently, but that did not excuse the shambling, uncertain line, the complete lack of organization. He began, as always with a new barton, with an attempt at an inspection. As always, he found more than one thing wrong.

“You got to take care of yer own scythe, Tam!” Gird yanked the blade loose and just stopped himself from throwing it on the ground. They couldn’t afford to lose a single scrap of edged steel. But every single time he had to check the bindings himself—it was enough to infuriate the Lady of Peace herself. Tam’s jaw set stubbornly; the others stared, half-afraid and half-fascinated. Gird took a long breath and let it out. “This time get it tight,” he said, handing Tam the blade. He could feel the tension drain away as he went down the line, looking at the other scythes. Most were in reasonable shape, though he wondered if they really would hold against horses or armor.

Fifteen men and three women. Eleven scythes, one pruning hook, two sickles, three shepherds’ crooks, two simple staves. Everyone had a knife, and all but one of them were sharp. Before they began the actual drill, he looked around the skyline. Nothing but a flock of sheep to the north, whose shepherd waved from the rise. Safe.

“All right. Line up.” They had done this before, taught by Per who had learned from Aris, who had learned from Gird the year before in Burry. They moved too slowly, but they did end up in straight lines, three rows of six. Tam was still trying to jam the end of his blade into the notch of the pole, tamping it against the ground. Maybe he’d learn, before he died.

“Carry.” They stared at him, then half the group remembered that that was a command, and wobbled their weapons, clearly unsure where the “carry” position was. Don’t rush it, Gird reminded himself, remembering the defections after his last temper tantrum. They have to learn from where they are, not from where they should be. “Carry,” he reminded them. “On your left shoulder—this one—because you have to be able to carry your weapon a long way, and without hitting anyone behind or beside you, or catching on theirs.” He reached out and took a scythe from someone—Battin, the name was—in the front rank, and showed them. “Like this.”

By the time they were all able to follow the basic commands at a halt, the sun was nearly overhead. Gird looked around again. The northern flock was out of sight over the rise, but another moved now across the slope to the west, and its shepherd waved elaborately. Good. Two more bartons coming to drill. Even so, even with the shepherd’s signals, he would take the usual precautions.

“Weapons into the sheepfold,” he said. “Another barton’s coming in.” Much more quickly than before, they obeyed, laying the scythes out of sight behind the low walls of the pens. Two of the women began to cut thistles with their sickles, gathering them into their aprons. The men with shepherds’ crooks leaned on the low-roofed lambing hut and began talking sheepbreeding. The others hid in the lambing hut itself. Gird sat on one of the walls, and caught his breath.

“Sir? Gird?” That was Per, the nominal yeoman marshal of this barton.

“Just Gird, Per. You’ve got a good group here.” It would be a good group after a year of enough to eat and heavy training, but it would do no good to say that.

“I’m sorry about Tam’s scythe. I—there’s so much I don’t know—”

“Don’t worry. You can’t do it all; that’s why I tell them they have to maintain their own weapons. You’ve done a lot: eighteen, and fifteen scythes.”

“Three women,” muttered Per. Gird shot him a glance.

“You believe the lords’ sayings about women, Per?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Our women have suffered with us all these years. We never kept them safe; they’ve borne the lords’ children, and lost them if they had one touch of magic: you know that. Now they ask to learn fighting with us: if our pain has earned that right for us, theirs has earned it for them.”

“But they’re not as strong—”

Gird bit back another sharp remark, and said instead, “Per, we don’t ask anyone to be strongest, or stronger. Just strong enough.”

“Whatever you say.”

“No. Whatever you finally see is right—dammit, Per, that’s what this is about. Not just my way—not just Gird instead of your lord or the king, but a fair way for everyone. You, me, our women, our children. Fair for everyone.”

“Fair for the lords?”

Gird snorted, caught off guard. “Well—maybe not for them. They had their chance.” He pushed himself off the wall. The incoming bartons had joined somewhere along the way, and were marching some thirty strong, all in step and clearly proud of themselves. He could not tell, at this distance, exactly what weapons they carried, but at least some of them were scythes. Per’s foot began to tap the beat as the formation came nearer. Gird let himself think what they could do with some decent armor, some real weapons. They were marching like soldiers, at least, and impressing the less experienced group he’d been working with. He called those in the lambing shed out to watch as the yeoman marshal of Hightop brought the formation to a halt.

They had a short rest, then all three bartons began drilling together. Almost fifty, Gird reckoned them up, a half-cohort as the lords would call it, most with staves. For the first time, Gird could see them facing real troops, the lords’ militia, with a chance to win. He marched them westward, away from the sheepfolds, got them reversed, reversed again, and then tried to convince them that when the column turned, it turned in only one place. Those behind were not to cut the corner, but march to the corner, and turn. Again, and another tangle. He sorted it out, and got them moving again.

It was then that a shepherd’s piercing whistle broke through the noise of their marching. Gird looked around, already knowing what it had to be. There, to the east, a mounted patrol out of Lord Kerrisan’s holding; already they’d been spotted. He saw the flash of sunlight on a raised blade. His mind froze, refusing to work for a moment. Someone else saw them, and moaned. He turned to see his proud half-cohort collapsing, some already turning to run, others with weapons loose in their hands. The sun seemed brighter; he could see every detail, from the sweat on their faces to the dust on their eyelashes.

“We have to get away,” said Per in a shaky voice. He heard the murmur of agreement, a grumble of dissent.

“We’ll never make it,” breathed someone else, and a heavy voice demanded “Who told them we were out here?”

“It’s a random patrol,” Gird answered, without really thinking about it. “A tensquad, no spears—if they’d known we were here they’d have sent more, and more weapons. Archers, lancers.” He glanced at the horsemen, now forming a line abreast. One of them had a horn, and blew a signal. Two of the horsemen peeled off, rode at an easy canter to either side. “They’re circling, to pen us—”

“But what can we do?” asked someone at the back of the clump that had once been a fighting formation.

I ask for a sign, and I get this, Gird sent silently to the blazing sun. Lord of justice, where are you now? A gust of wind sent a swirl of dust up his nose, and he sneezed. “I’ll tell you what we can do,” he said, turning on his ragged troops the ferocity that had no other outlet. “We can quit standing here like firewood waiting the axe, and line up! Now!” A few had never shifted; a few moved back, others forward. Two at the back bolted. “No.” To his surprise, his voice halted them; they looked back. “Run and you’re dead. We’re all dead. By the gods, this is what we’ve been training for. Now get in your places, and pick up your weapons, and listen to me.”

The others moved, after nervous glances at the slowly moving horsemen, back into their places. Gird grinned at them. “And get those weapons ready!” Far too slowly, the scythes and sickles and crooks and sticks came forward. At once Gird could see what was wrong, besides not having anything but a knife and short cudgel of his own. They could face only one way, and he knew, knew without even trying it, that they’d never reverse in formation, with weapons ready. There had to be a way—what could work? In his mind, he saw his mother’s pincushion, pins sticking out all ways—but then how could they move? There was no time; the horsemen were closing, still at a walk, but he knew they would break to a trot or canter any moment. They must be a little puzzled by a mass of peasants who weren’t trying to run, weren’t screaming in fear.

“We have to kill them all,” Gird said, as calmly as if he knew they could do it. “When they’re close enough to fight, they can recognize you. The only way you can be safe back on your farms, is if you kill them all. That’s what all this drill is for, and now you’re going to use it.” All those eyes stared right at his, blue and gray and brown. He felt as if someone were draining all the strength from his body; they were pulling it out of him, demanding it. “You can do it,” he said, not pleading but firmly, reminding them. Never mind that this wasn’t the best place for a small group of half-trained peasants to fight a mounted troop. Make do, make it work anyway. Miss this chance and you’ll not have another. I’ll be safely dead, he thought wryly.

Almost automatically, the formation had chosen the side facing the horsemen as the front. Gird walked quickly along it, nodding, and then, talking as he worked, shifted those on the flank and rear to face out. “If they come from two directions, we have to be ready. You turn like this—yes—facing out, and you behind him—yes, you—you put your crook here. You, with the stick—poke at their eyes.”

“But do we hit the horse or the man?” asked someone behind him. This group had never drilled against even imaginary horses.

“The horse,” said Gird. “If you hurt the horse, either it’ll run or the man will fall off. Now think—you want to open a big hole—”

He heard the hoofbeats louder now, and faster. Sure enough, they were trotting towards him, eight horsemen with their swords out and shining in the sun. The horses looked huge, and their hooves pounded the dry ground. The two sent around the peasant formation had stopped: clearly they were intended to prevent runaways. The horsemen yelled, a shrill wavering cry, and Gird yelled back, instinctively. His motley troop yelled, too, a sound half-bellow and half-scream of fear. Two of the horses shied, to be yanked back into line by their riders. The peasants yelled again, louder; the riders spurred to a full charge. Belatedly, the other two riders charged the back side of the formation.

He was still thinking I hope this works when the riders crashed into the block of peasants. The horses’ weight and speed drove them into the formation, but five of them died before they cleared the other side. Gird himself slammed his cudgel into one horse’s head, leaping aside to let it stagger past into the sickle of the woman behind him. The rider missed his swing at Gird, but got the woman’s arm; someone buried a scythe in his back before he could swing again. Two riders were dragged from their mounts and stabbed; another took a scythe in the belly before sliding sideways off his horse, screaming. Gird saw one of the women with a simple pole poke one rider off-balance; someone else caught his sword-arm and stabbed him as he fell.

It was over in minutes. Ten horsemen lay dead or dying on the ground; seven horses were dead, two crippled, and one, spooked, galloped away to the west. Gird looked around, amazed. The woman who had lost an arm sat propped against a dead horse, holding the stump and trying not to cry. Eight were dead; two others badly hurt. But—but peasants on foot, with no weapons but the tools of their work, had defeated armed men on horseback. Not an equal fight, but a real one.

He knew he should say something to them, but he couldn’t think of anything fitting. He looked around the horizon, and saw only the sentinel shepherd, waving that no danger neared. Per came up to him, bleeding from a gash on his scalp, bruised, amazed to be alive. They all were. Per nodded at the woman who’d lost an arm, and said “Gird—I see now.”

“Do you?” He felt a thousand years older as his fury drained away. It had to be better to die this way, fighting in the open, than rotting in dungeons or worked to hunger and sickness, but those silent bodies had been people a few minutes before. That woman had had two hands. He nodded at Per, and walked over to crouch beside her. Someone else had already torn a strip of cloth from her skirt to tie around the stump. “You—?”

She had gone pale, now, the gray-green pallor before fainting or death, but she managed a shaky smile, and moved her other hand, still gripping the sickle. “I—killed the horse.”

“You did.”

“I—fought—they—died—”

“Yes.”

“All?”

“All.”

“Good.” With that she crumpled, and before they had finished sorting out the dead and wounded, she had died.

“Noooo!” That scream came from one of the other women, who fell sobbing on the dead one’s body. Then she whirled to face Gird, her face distorted. “You let her die! You—you killed her—and this is what happens—” She waved her arms to encompass the whole bloody scene. “You said fight to live, but she’s dead, and Jori and Tam and Pilan—” Her voice broke into wild sobbing. Gird could think of nothing to say: she was right, after all. The woman had died, and seven others, and the two worst wounded would probably die, even if their lord didn’t notice their wounds and kill them for that. The ten horsemen had probably had lovers or wives, maybe children—the weight of that guilt lay on his shoulders. But another voice, thick with pain, spoke out.

“Nay, Mirag! Rahi’s dead, but she died happy, knowing she’d fought well. Not in a cage in the castle, like young Siela, when she tried to refuse that visiting duke, and not hanging from a hook on the wall, screaming for hours, like Varin. Gird promised us a chance, not safety.”

“You say that, with that hole in you, with your heart’s blood hot on your side? What will Eris say, tonight, when she has no one beside her: what will your children say?”

The man coughed, and wiped blood from his mouth. “Eris knows I’m here, and she knows why. If she weren’t heavy for bearing, she’d be here herself, and the little ones too. This is best, Mirag. Rahi’s satisfied, and I’m satisfied, and if you keep whining along like that, I’ll say out what I think should happen to you!”

The woman paled, and her mouth shut with a snap. The man looked at Gird.

“She’s not bad, Marig—Rahi’s her sister.”

“I’m sorry,” It was all he could say. Marig shrugged, an abrupt jerk of her shoulder; the man beckoned with a finger and Gird went to him.

“D’you know much of healer’s arts?” Gird shook his head “Might should learn, then. If I’d been able, I’d’ve put a tighter band on Rahi’s arm. You’ll need that craft, Gird.”

“You’ll get well, and be our healer,” said Gird, but the man shook his head.

“Nay—this is a killing wound, but slower than some. Blood’ll choke me, inside. But you’d best get all away, before more trouble comes.”

A flick of memory, of his old sergeant’s words long ago, came to Gird. “We won’t leave wounded here, to be taken and questioned.”

The man grinned tightly. “I hoped you’d think so. Make it quick, then.”

“Is there anyone you’d—?”

“You’ll do. You made it work.” Gird grimaced; he had to have someone else agree, or it would feel like simple murder. He called Per over, and Aris, the yeoman marshal of Hightop. The wounded man was still conscious enough to give his assent again, and Aris, slightly more experienced than Per, saw at once why it must be done.

But neither would do it. So Gird took his well-worn dagger, and knelt by the man’s side, and wondered how he’d feel if he were lying there, bleeding inside and choking, and how he could be quickest. Worst would be weakness, another pain that did not kill. So he put the whole strength of his arm into it, slicing almost through the man’s neck.

The other badly injured man was unconscious, having been hit in the head, and then trampled under a horse. He quit breathing, with a last gasping snort, just as Gird reached him. Then it was only the hard, bloody work of dragging the corpses together onto a pile of brushwood and thistles, stacking what weapons they could use to one side. The group from Per’s barton left first, to enter their village as best they might without attracting attention. They dared not carry any of the spare weapons, and Gird cautioned them not to take personal belongings from their friends’ bodies.

“They’ll know someone was here,” he said, “to start the fire. But if you’re carrying a tool or trinket someone recognizes, they’ll know you, too, were part of it. This way it can seem that everyone from this village died, and it might spare you trouble.” Not really, he knew: there was going to be trouble for everyone—but there had always been.

They seemed calm enough, even Marig. She had quit sobbing, at least, and she laid the locket she’d taken from her sister’s neck back on her without being told twice. “Can’t we even take Tam’s scythe?” one man asked. “We don’t have that many.” His own crook had shattered. Gird shook his head again.

“With so few scythes, everyone will know that Tam’s is with you. It’ll be taken, but not to your village.” He nodded to Per, who started them off, in trickles of two or three, moving indirectly.

Aris had the other two bartons ready to move out; each one carried his or her own weapon, and some them carried a second, taken from the fallen. Gird dithered over the swords. For one of them to be found carrying a soldier’s sword meant instant death—but to lose all those blades—In the end he let them decide, and ten volunteers belted swords they could not use around their peasant jerkins.

“Are you sure you need to burn the bodies?” Aris asked. Gird said nothing; he’d never imagined doing anything else. It was in all the tales. “We’ll need a good start of them,” Aris went on, when Gird didn’t answer. “They’ll have horses near enough—we don’t know but what the smoke could be seen a long way, and the horses might come anyhow, and find us on the way. I don’t know—I don’t know if I could lead another fight today.”

“You could if you had to,” said Gird, plunged once more into how different it was in stories and reality. But Aris made sense, and he looked at the stacked bodies. The smoke would draw attention; someone would come, and that someone would likely be mounted, and ready for trouble. No smoke, and another patrol would go looking for the first—might not find them right away—but to let the dead lie out unprotected? He squinted up, and saw the first dark wings sailing far up. That alone would draw attention.

“All right,” he said, finally. “No fire.” Lady, bless these dead—these brave and helpless—Aris nodded, clearly relieved, and set off with his bartons. Gird angled away from them, his own new sword heavy at his side. Did I do the right thing? he asked himself. Am I doing the right thing now?

He looked back from a farther ridge, some hours later, and saw a column of dark wings. The woman’s face came to him, that face so composed, even as she died, and the thought of dark beaks tearing her face, gouging out her eyes—he stopped abruptly, and threw up on the short grass, retching again and again, and scrubbing the dried blood on his hands. Nor could that be the end of it: he had started something, back there, that no crow could pick clean, and no fox bury the bones of—he had started something, like a boy rolling a rock down a hillside, and the end would be terrible.

Word of the Norwalk battle spread as fast among the lords as among the bartons. Gird, sifting reports from his runners and spies, spared a moment for amazement at the varying interpretations. By the end of the first day, that column of carrion crows had attracted another patrol. By the end of the second, the little village of Berryhedge had been put to the torch, and the villagers—those who had not fled the first night—were dead or penned in the nearest fort’s yard, to be dealt with at the next court. The other two bartons had made it home safely, and so far their stolen blades had not been discovered. Bruises and cuts alone were not suspicious; too many of the farmfolk suffered injuries in their work year-round for that to be a sign of collaboration. But all the lords’ guards were alert, watching for smoke from illicit fires, searching for weapons, stopping travelers on the roads. It was, some said, a huge army—an invasion from the neighboring kingdom of Tsaia—the private war of one lord on another—the peasant uprising that had been feared so long. On the strength of one escaped horse, and its tracks, someone even decided that it had been an attack by cavalry, using peasants as infantry. No, argued another: it was an alliance of horse nomads and peasants.

To Gird’s surprise, some bartons now wanted to march out looking for patrols to fight. He reminded them of the dead and wounded, the village destroyed. But this was the first time that his people had fought, in military formation, against their old enemies, and they were elated.

“I can’t see why you aren’t happier about it,” Felis said. “It worked, just as you said it would. Losses, yes: you had warned us, no war without deaths, without wounded. We understand that. But it worked. If we keep drilling, keep working, we can stand against them. And there are more of us; the numbers are on our side.”

“I am happy.” Even to himself, Gird did not sound happy, and he knew it. “I am—I just see the other side. Felis, we have only one real chance: we have to do it all, and do it right, because if we don’t, then everyone who dies has died for nothing.”

“It’s not for nothing; it’s for freedom.” Felis scratched his sunburnt nose, and stalked around a moment before coming back to plant himself in front of Gird. “Look—you found a way for us to stand against their weapons and their training. It worked. Not even with the best of us, who’ve been training years now, but with one barton so new they hardly knew their left feet from their right. If you can do it with that, you can do it with anyone. Lady’s grace, Gird, the day you walked into our camp I wouldn’t believe you could get my men to pick up their own filth. But you did. What’s wrong now?”

Gird could not answer. He knew, as he knew the ache in his bones, that it was not that easy. It could not be that easy. But they needed him to say it was, to cheer them on, to give the simple answer he knew was not enough. He felt himself resisting, as he had once or twice when the steward put pressure on him, as if he were a tree, rooting himself deep in the ground. The one thing he knew, the one thing he had to give, was his own certainty when he was right—and if he did not know he was right, he could not say it.

Felis, he could see, did not like his expression or that refusal to rejoice in their victory. Nor did others, who visibly damped their own glee when he was around. He should do it—but when he opened his mouth, stretched it in a smile, nothing came out. We won, he told himself, and the depths of his mind, cautious as any farmer to the last, said We won that time.

He was not even sure what it would take to win, in the way he meant win, in the way that would bring lasting peace. He threw himself into more planning, trying to calculate how many yeomen they had by now, and where, and trying to picture the larger country in which his war would now take place. A few soldiers had defected, men ordered to burn their own villages, or seize their own relatives, men who faced in adulthood what Gird had faced as a boy. They knew more of tactics than he did, and insisted that he had to have support in the towns, as well as the farms.

Meanwhile, the conflicts continued. Another ambush, and another. A guard encampment attacked at night; another village burned, and its fields torched. Like it or not, ready or not, it was on him; he must fly on that wind, or be left behind. Gird drove himself and those he knew best, traveling far to meet the yeoman-marshals of other bartons, to speak to those who were not sure, who were afraid. By autumn, he was moving far beyond the villages and fields he knew best, trusting those he had trained to keep his own group working, to find a safe wintering. This next year would see whole villages rise—even before planting time—and he had to be ready to lead his army in the field.

Chapter Sixteen

Something rasped, in the dry winter bushes, a sound too small for a cry, too great for a wild thing slipping away. Gird crouched, stock still, wondering whether to run now or investigate. It could be—it was probably—a trap. Someone had talked, and the town guard were out here to catch him. The sound came again, and with it another, like a sob choked down. Trickery, it would be. They were trying to lure him that way. But even as he thought this, he was moving, carefully as he might, threading his way through the prickly stiff brush.

In the gloom, he nearly stepped on the naked, bruised body that lay curled on its side. He stooped, after a hard look around that showed nothing but more brush. A man, an old man with thin gray hair and beard. One eye had been gouged out; the other showed only bloodshot white behind an enormous bruise. The man’s pale skin bore many bruises, scratches where the bushes had torn at him, whip marks on his back, burns on his hands and feet. Yet he was alive, his breathing unsteady and loud, but strong enough, and he had a steady pulse at his neck.

Gird squatted on his heels, considering. It was already cold, and would be colder with full night. An old man, beaten and burned, missing an eye—he’d likely die by morning, left here with no covering and no care. But inside the town, the barton waited. Even now they’d be gathering, waiting for him, waiting for the hope that only he could bring. And the old man might die anyway. Gird touched the old man’s shoulder, then wished he hadn’t, for the bloodshot eye opened.

“No . . .” breathed a tremulous voice.

“You’re safe,” said Gird, knowing he lied, but not what else to say.

“Cold . . .” came a murmur.

“It’s all right.” His mind went back to his own home, the times he’d teased one of the women for that soothing “It’s all right,” when it wasn’t. He could understand that now. It didn’t make things all right. With a gusty sigh—too loud a sigh, he thought instantly: it would carry in the quiet twilight—Gird stripped to the waist and laid his shirt, sweaty as it was, on the old man’s body. He had to have his dark jerkin for later . . . but he could spare the shirt.

“I’ll help you,” he said, and put his arm under the old man’s shoulder. Groaning, and obviously trying to smother it, the old man managed to get his arms into Gird’s shirt.

“You—should not—”

“I can’t leave you here to die,” said Gird. He couldn’t help it that the words came out harsh, not comforting. He was late, and he was going to be later yet, and if he had to climb in over the wall, he was very likely to be seen.

“Who?” Now wrapped in the shirt, the old man had recovered scraps of his dignity; he asked with little volume but much authority. Gird chose to misunderstand the question.

“Who beat you? I don’t know; I just found you. You don’t remember?”

The old man held up his hands—longfingered, graceful hands, for all the ugly burns—and said softly, “Esea’s light be with you, the High Lord’s justice come to you, the Lady of Peace lay her hand on your brow—” He paused, as Gird scrambled back, careless of noise. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t curse me!” It was hardly louder than the old man’s murmur, but the anger in it carried.

“Curse you?” The old man chuckled, a breathy sound much like the whuffling of a horse. “Lad, it’s a blessing—I’m giving you my blessing. Don’t you know that much?”

Gird shifted uneasily. “What I know is, the longer we stay here, the likelier well be seen. Whoever beat you—”

“The senior priest at Esea’s hall,” said the old man. He was sitting up on his own, now, looking with apparently idle curiosity at the burns on his feet. “He called me a heretic, and held what he would call a trial by fire. I call that torture, but the law permits it. And as I lived still when he was done, they stripped and beat me and threw me off the wall.”

“You should be dead!” said Gird, and then reddened, realizing how it sounded.

The old man chuckled again. “That’s what the high priest said, in other words—that I should be dead, for the harm I’d done and might do, and he did his best. The gods, however, sent you—” He reached around, in the gathering darkness, as if groping for a staff, then stretched his hand to Gird. “Here, then. Help me up.”

“But you can’t—”

“I can’t lie here in the cold in your shirt. Come now—give me your hand. It’s not so bad as you think.” Gird reached out, and felt the man’s hand slide into his. It was bony, as old hands are, with loose skin over the knuckles, but stronger than he expected. And he could not feel, against his own horny palm, the crusted burns he expected. The old man staggered once, then stood, peering about. “Ah—” he said finally. “There they are.” Gird looked, and saw nothing but the chest-high bushes disappearing into evening gloom. “If you will wait,” the old man said, more command than request, and he plunged into the tangle without making a sound. Gird waited, although he was definitely going to have to climb the wall. The barton would be wondering if he’d been caught.

When the old man came back, he had a very dirty ragged garment slung around his shoulders, over Gird’s shirt, and some kind of covering on his feet. It looked, in that light, much like the rags peasants wore wrapped around their feet in winter, when they had nothing better.

“Now, lad,” he said, far more briskly than Gird would have thought possible. “Now we can go into town without fear.”

Gird opened his mouth to argue, but instead found himself retracing his path through the bushes, the old man’s hand clenched firmly on his elbow. The old man’s other hand held Gird’s staff. Without fear? Did the old man plan to ask the gate guards to let them in, when he’d been beaten and left for dead? What was he?

When they came to the gates, the postern was still open, and the last few townspeople were hurrying in. A row of torches burned brightly, lighting their faces for the guards to see. Gird tried to shy aside, into the shadows, but the old man’s hand forced him to walk right up the middle of the trade road, into that golden light. He thought frantically how he could get out of this without alerting the guards, and glanced sideways at the old man.

In torchlight, the old man looked altogether different. Smaller, crook-backed, with a dry seamed scar where his eye had been, not the red dripping socket Gird had seen. Almost bald on top, and a wisp of pure white at his chin, a patched leather cape over a rough wool shirt (and it doesn’t even look like my shirt, thought Gird), patched leather breeches on bowed legs, feet indeed wrapped in dirty rags. He leaned on Gird’s arm, and the staff, as if his legs could hardly bear his weight.

“Ho, there!” One of the guards stepped forward, lifting a torch to peer at their faces. “And who be you, coming in so late—don’t know your face!”

Gird opened his mouth, and found a name in it. “Amis of Barle’s village, m’lord, and m’father’s father Geris, come to pilgrimage at th’shrine.”

“Should’ve come earlier; the gate’s closed to outsiders.”

At this the old man mewled, an infantile wail of misery and disappointment. The guard grinned, insolent but not unkind. “Never seen anyone needed a miracle more, and that’s a fact. Got any honey to sweeten the sib, Amis of Barle’s?”

“Honey, m’lord?” Gird let his jaw hang down stupidly, and patted his “grandfather’s” hand. “We’s no bees, m’lord, that’s for them’s got orchard trees. But we’s barley-cake—” He fished in his jerkin for the stale end of barley cake he’d saved from breakfast, and offered it. Whatever was going on, he was supposed to pretend stupidity and meekness. The guardsman looked at him, long and steady, then pushed it back. “If that’s all you’ve had, coming in from so far, keep it. Now, gransire, we’ve had an upset today, and I’ll have to see your hands before you enter.”

“Hands?” asked Gird before he thought. The one on his arm squeezed hard, hard as a strong young man, and released him. The guard nodded.

“In case a thief tries to sneak back in,” he said. “He’s hand-branded, that one, and we’re to look at all strangers, especially those with one eye gone. I’m sure your gransire isn’t the thief, but I must look.” And he took each of the old man’s knotted hands, and looked at the palm. So did Gird—and saw nothing but old pink skin, marked by heavy work. The guard jerked his chin up. “Get on in, fellow, you and your gransire, and be sure you’re not up to any mischief this night. Beggars’ steps on the winter side of Hall, and no laying up in someone’s doorway.”

“Thanks, m’lord.” Gird found himself pulling his forelock before he thought of it, and edged by the guard with care for his companion.

Once through the town’s wall, the old man used his grip of Gird’s elbow to guide him toward the main square. The streets were busy yet, full of people who knew exactly where to go. Gird had his own directions from the gate, but he went where the old man wanted him to—he had no choice.

In the square, a few stalls still had shutters open. A bakery, its main doors closed, sold the remnants of the day’s baking out a broad window. From one stall came the sour smell of bad ale, from another the stomach-churning scent of hot oil and frying meat. Gird swallowed his hunger, and found that his tongue now responded to his own will.

“I’ve somewhere to go,” he said gruffly. “Can you find a safe place?”

“Better than you,” said the old man. “Could you have come through the gates alone?”

Gird grunted. Of course he couldn’t, not that late, but if it hadn’t been for the old man, he wouldn’t have been that late. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “You were hurt, you could hardly move—”

“We can’t stand here in the open talking,” said the old man. “I want my supper.” This last became a weak whine, suitable to the aged cripple he seemed to be, and Gird was not surprised to see a couple of guards walk by, scanning the faces as they went.

“I don’t have anything but that barley cake,” said Gird, and added unwillingly, as the guards paused, “Granther, you know that. It took all coppers we’s got to make this trip for your eye. Here—” He fished out the barley cake, and broke it, as the guards watched. The old man took his share in a shaky hand, almost whimpering in his eagerness. A drop of spittle ran down his chin into his beard, glittering in the guards’ torchlight.

“Beggars’ steps over there,” said one of the guards gruffly, gesturing across the square. Gird bobbed his head, hoping he looked stupid and harmless. The guards moved on, stopping to joke with the baker’s lass, as she reached to close the shutters at the window. The old man touched Gird’s arm, pushing him gently towards the beggars’ steps.

When they sank down on the lowest of the five steps, Gird stuffed his piece of barley cake back into his jerkin, and said again “I have somewhere I must go. Can you stay here? Will they find you?”

In the dimness, the old man’s face was suddenly more visible, as if a candle had been lit inside it. “Lad, I can stay here, or go, or stay with you, and they will not find me—have you seen nothing this evening?”

“Riddles,” said Gird. “You give me tricks and riddles—”

“I give you light in darkness.” The old man’s face shone brighter, then dimmed. “But the blind cannot see light, and think darkness is reality.”

Gird stirred on the cold step, not sure what he could say. The old man was mad, and no wonder, with what he’d been through. He must have been one of them—perhaps one of their elder mages—and he’d angered someone. They’d taken their revenge, and wrecked his mind as well as his body. Probably as bad as the rest of them, when he was whole, but now—“I need to go now,” he said, as gently as he could. “I’ll come back you.”

“Yes,” said the old man. “You will.” He bit off a chunk of the barley cake, and started chewing it. Gird watched a moment, feeling a strange confusion in his mind, then shook his head and got up.

The meeting place, when he finally found it, was a merchant’s storeroom crowded with nervous men, at least a dozen of them, and lit by two candles. He’d expected only the elders of the barton, but apparently others had insisted on coming. Was this a trap? He tried to see the corners of the storeroom as he gave the password again, but darkness lurked behind bales and boxes as if it were alive and twitching. His neck itched; he wanted to whirl and look behind himself, but he controlled that urge.

Calis, the only man he’d met before, limped forward to shake his arm and then grinned broadly at the rest. “I told you he’d come. Whatever happens, he’d come.”

“He’s late.” That was a square-built, black-bearded man, with a look of authority and the weathered face of someone out in the open most of his life.

“He’s here. That’s what counts.” Calis shook his arm again. “Lady bless you, Gird, for coming. You’ll lead us, eh? Make us free?”

Calis had not sounded that simple back in Harrow, when he visited that barton’s drill. Then he had seemed a possible leader, someone who could organize a barton, start its training. Gird looked around as calmly as he might, trying to figure out what had gone wrong here. Fifteen men, no women—that was still common enough, despite his urging. None very young: quite right, at such a secret meeting; young men talked too much. None very old. Four held themselves with a kind of furious rigidity: men used to command, perhaps, pretending a passivity they could not feel? Gird smiled at the black-bearded man. “Hurry makes the fleet fall, and the aim wide: I came as I might, to come safely.”

“You would preach safety in war?” That was another of the four he’d noted, a tall brown bear of a man leaning against the stacked boxes across from him.

“I preach nothing, being no priest. As Calis will have told you, I expect—” He glanced at Calis, whose gaze slid past him. So. Trouble indeed. “I teach what seems obvious to me, that wild rebellion against the king but causes death and torment.”

“And this is what we came for?” The brown man pushed away from the boxes to confront him. “We came to hear the same song the priests sing: obey, submit, seek peace from the Lady in your hour of death?”

“Gird, tell them. Tell them what you told us at Harrow.”

The worst trouble: treachery. Their first rule was never to mention one barton in another, to say only “there” or “that other place” or “his barton.” Gird shook Calis’s hand from his arm, but without violence, and tried to decide where the worst danger lay. He could not fight fifteen, were they all of the same mind, but it was just as likely that Calis had tried to entrap honest rebels as well as one rebel leader. If he could but find them out, and lead them. A dense silence packed the room thicker than the men. Someone behind the black-bearded man coughed. Was it a signal?

Gird glanced around the group, meeting all eyes but Calis’s. In the candlelight, all glittered; he could not tell false from true. He lifted his hand for silence, though all were quiet, and began.

“You know the times are bad. You know they’re getting worse. Bad enough when peasants are murdered at their work, when wives and mothers are raped and beaten, left for dead with their babies crawling in their blood. Worse, when the craftsman’s skill is bought with pain and threats, when a smith must make shackles and chains for prisoners, not plows and harrows for farming. Bad enough when merchants’ goods are stolen for the rich, and they must cheat the poor to survive.” He looked from face to face. There was one closed, tight with anger—for old wrongs, or for his words? Another sat slack-jawed, as if he could drink Gird’s words in, taste them on his tongue. There in the dim shadows at the back, two heads leaned together, mouth to ear.

“You know there’s been fighting—everyone knows that. Men and women have died, for trying to save their own lives. You know that all the times farmers and craftsmen and merchants have tried to fight against trained soldiers, they’ve been killed, and their families with them. What I’m telling you is about another way.”

“A way for peasants to fight soldiers?” asked the black-bearded man.

“A way for peasants to be soldiers.” Gird paused. That was the nub of it, and enough to have him hanged. He sensed a stirring back in the shadows. Well, he need not mince words now, having already convicted himself, and maybe boldness would gather a few to his side. “The difference between soldiers and hopeless fools willing to die is training. Not fine swords, nor magic, but training—the training soldiers have.”

“And you can give us that training?” That voice came from wealth and privilege, with its arrogant sonorities. Gird smiled straight at it.

“I? I’m a farmer: I give nothing. But I know how you can earn that training, and that’s my reason here.” Out of the gloom sea-green eyes stared into his. He could just make out a foxy brush of hair, a slender figure no longer lounging in the shadows but upright, alert. Odds it was some noble’s son, come to spit rebels with his guards around him to keep him safe.

“Gods know, farmers give nothing.” That voice again, this time clearly belonging to green eyes and an arrogant set of head and shoulders. “That sounds like kapristi talking, if a farmer knows what kapristi are.” He didn’t, but he caught the muttered “Gnomes!” of another.

“Farmers earn their bread,” Gird said, working his toes in his boots to ready himself. It had to come soon. “As craftsmen do, and merchants too, most times. What’s earned feeds; what’s given rots the belly. What’s taken—” He stopped as light dazzled his eyes, light that polished the blades drawn against him. He saw no source, but it centered on the brown man.

“What’s taken belongs to the taker,” said he, amusement ruffling the edge of his voice. “Traitors taken, in this town, belong to me.” He stood easily, weaponless, but from behind the stacked boxes had come two guards, with pikes, and four of the other men had drawn swords. To Gird’s surprise, the green-eyed man wasn’t one of them: his face drew back, shocked into loss of its earlier dignity. Calis stood dithering, clearly wondering whether to seize Gird or retreat to the safety of shadows.

“What’s taken,” Gird said, meeting the brown man’s eyes, “chokes the taker.” His fingers clenched and loosened, and he realized then that he’d left his stout staff with the old man on the beggars’ steps. Idiot he told himself. You’re asking the gods for a miracle. The brown man gave a smile that might have been genuine admiration.

“You’re brave, at least—no whining craven like most of your type. Too bad you didn’t choose honest soldiery, fellow—”

“I tried,” said Gird, keeping his voice level with an effort. He was not sure why he bothered to answer, save that he had no plan, and saw little help in the faces of others. “As a lad, I joined my count’s guard right willingly. But then—”

“What?” asked the brown man, lifting a hand to halt the guards who had moved a step nearer. Gird looked at him, seeing nothing like the vindictive arrogance of his own count. Those eyes might have been honest; that mouth had laughed honestly, at things worth amusement, not at others’ pain. Well, it would serve nothing, but he would tell this man the truth, and if one of them lived after his night, that one would know it had been told.

“The lord of our village came from the king’s court with his friends, to celebrate his coming of age. One of the village lads chose that confusion to steal plums from the lord’s orchard—” Gird paused, and the man nodded for him to go on. Despite himself, his voice trembled over the next phrases, and he forced more breath into it, almost growling at the end. “So our lord had him taken, which was just enough, and had him tormented and finally maimed, which was not just, not for a few plums. And he enjoyed the sight, gloating over the boy’s pain, and I—” He stopped again, drew in a great breath. “I was hardly older; I’d known Meris all my life.” His accent thickened, he could tell the brown man had trouble following it now. “I knew—I knew someday they’d tell me the same, to hurt or kill some poor lad as only wanted a handful of plums or a truss of grapes. Kill m’own folk, maybe, if in a bad year th’cows wandered. I could’na do that—could not—and so I ran, and it fell hard on my own folk even when I came back.”

“You’re from Kelaive’s domain,” the brown man said, softly. “That insolent pup, worst of a bad litter. I’d heard that tale differently.”

“Certain so, if he told it,” said Gird, caught up as always in that old pain, but also, suddenly curious to know how Kelaive told it.

“Not from him: his sergeant told one of my guards, and it passed to me on one long march—a good soldier ruined, he said, by a bad lord’s whim, and the blame fell on him, too, for not knowing how to keep you.” The man shook his head. “Well. You know the law, that’s clear, and your place in it. You had a bad master; that’s no excuse—”

“And what would be?” asked Gird, his voice tight with unshed tears and old anger still caged. “Would my mother’s death, when that count refused the simples of the wood to us? Would our hunger, in a bad winter when Kelaive danced in the king’s hall and laid double taxes on, to buy himself more gowns? Would my daughter’s pain, her own babe by her lover dead, and her raped to bear a stranger’s child? Cows stolen to make his feasts, sheep taken to give him wool—by all the gods, we farmers may not give, but we take better care of our least creatures than you lords do of us. Prod an ox and it kicks, and even a beaten cur will turn and bite your heel—”

“Peace, fellow!” The brown man stared at him. “Esea’s dawn, but you’ve a long tongue in your head, and wit in that thick skull. A hard use dulls most tools, but those of high temper—” He stopped, gestured, and the four drawn swords rasped back into their sheaths, though the guards stayed as they were, poised just behind him. “See here: would you take service with me, you and your family safe from Kelaive, and quit this nonsense? You’ll be killed, elsewise, and your family take the brunt of Kelaive’s bad will: by law I must report those rebels I seize.”

He might have done it, had not Calis seized his hand and rushed into speech. “Yes, Gird, yes! He’s a good lord, he is, and fair and just—he’ll keep his word to you—” But under the rush of words was fear, and in the other eyes he saw the same fear trembling. He shook off Calis’s hand, and met the brown man’s eyes.

“You will protect me, you say.” The brown man nodded, gravely. “But what of these others? You may be trying to be a good lord, sir—” The sir came out slowly, but inexorably, “—but here are those who thought you bad enough to join a plot against you.” He waved his hand around at those who clearly wished they could be invisible. “You may be better than Kelaive—I dare say you are, and it should be easy enough. But you can’t protect all those that need it, and it looks like you haven’t protected all your own, even.”

The brown man looked around; Gird watched the men flinch as he looked at each one slowly. “Cobbler. Wheelwright. Cloth merchant. Baker’s helper. You think to make a government out of such as these, farmer? Who’ll make your laws? Who’ll judge in your courts?”

“Honest men, sir.” He didn’t want to say “sir,” to someone who would either kill him, or be killed, this night, but he found himself doing it anyway. And he could not hate this man, who was so much more reasonable than Kelaive.

“Honest merchants?” Scorn edged the brown main’s voice. Gird noticed one of the men stiffen: that had gone home. “You think to find honest judges from a tangle of merchants who pour water in the milk, or chalk in flour they sell you. Or among farmers who put the bruised fruit in the basket first, or craftsmen who put as much base metal in gold or silver as they can?”

“As near there as among nobles, sir,” Gird said, and braced himself for the blow that would surely come. The brown man glared at him, showing anger for the first time. “At least among common men, of different trades, there’s a chance they’d stick to a measure, not make different weights and measures for each case.”

“Damn!” The brown man clenched his fist then opened it. “You are a man, after all. I hate—it’s too bad you cannot bring yourself to take service here.” He glanced aside, at the black-bearded man who had been one of the swordsmen. “Remember what I said, Caer? Squeeze the mud, and it turns to stone; beat the ore and get gold: from the pressure we put on them, such comes out. I would be proud if son of mine had courage to speak so before a deadly peril, had wit to think in bondage.” He turned back to Gird. “Death it must be, but a man like you does not fear death. I swear no torment; come quietly and I’ll ensure the headsman’s single blow. If you must fight, then I cannot interfere, and not all wounds kill cleanly.”

For some reason he could not define, Gird felt a change in the room’s atmosphere, as if a shutter had opened, letting in fresher air and truer light. He smiled at the brown man. “Sir, it’s not my way to give in so easily. But I will admit that had my lord been like you, I might not be here.”

“Were my subjects like you, Gird, I might not be here either.” He looked around again. “Out of these weaklings, these trimmers, you’d make an army? Were you to have the chance to try, I’d wish you luck of it, but worry none.”

Some bright image stung Gird’s mind, and he said “Well—if you have no worry, you could let me train them, as a wager, and see if they can withstand trained arms.”

The man laughed openly. “Well, indeed, fellow! Wit and tenacity combined! Let you train a score or so of malcontents to harass my guards, and for a wager—that passes wit, Gird of Kelaive’s domain, and near approaches madness. And I should be mad to take such wager.”

“But why are you here, if you fear nothing from them?”

The brown man scowled, and a quick flicking glance to the green-eyed youth in the shadows conveyed some urgent menace. “You ask much, fellow. But if you think only subjects have troubled families, and because you will soon be dead, I’ll tell you. That—” He flicked a hand at the green-eyed youth. “That’s my son, one of them, a true-son, of my lady’s breeding. I came because he came, and knew he came because that bold tailor, there, came to me and warned me. My son’s of an age to seek adventures, to throw off fatherly wisdom, and stir up excitement—to seek, in a word, such midnight meetings, secret societies, all that.”

“I tried to tell you—” began the youth, but his father’s gesture stopped him.

“He would say that he’s done this for me: the lad lies, and all my beatings never stopped him. He feels deprived, that his brothers’ share of my wealth is larger. They’ve increased it; he’s squandered his. So he joins conspiracies against me, but with no real conviction. He’d most likely have confessed this one in another season.”

“Your son. You love him?”

“Love! He’s my son; he’s my blood and bone—but he’s as craven as any of these fools about to spend their last breath in prison.”

“You’ll put him there too?”

“Him? No; he’s my son. I may send him off to serve with the king’s army against the nomads, though. Let him freeze his rump in an icy saddle for a winter, and see if he learns wisdom.”

“And so a rich young man, who’s had all the chances to do better, gets off with a half-year’s exile from home, while the poor wretches with him must die—”

“It’s necessary,” said the brown man roughly.

“Oh, it’s necessary,” said Gird slowly, drawling it out in caricature of his own peasant accent. “And it’s that makes it necessary for us to fight. When it comes down to it, your justice is to save your own blood, and kill what stands in the way.”

“So does anyone!” snapped the man, his patience clearly fraying.

“No, sir. I’ve seen it myself, villagers sharing their few bits of food so the fewest died. We was all hungry, sir, each one of us, but we didn’t grab for self alone. You don’t have to believe it, but I’ve seen, and I know, and so does most of these others.”

Suddenly, as if he were suspended in the air at the very top of the room, Gird saw himself from outside, his own heavy-boned weatherbeaten face, his shaggy thinning hair, his heavy arms gleaming with sweat, his old leather jerkin a little loose where the past months of travel had thinned his belly. Baggy-kneed breeches, patched and stained, worn boots badly in need of resoling, no weapons but fists like knotted lumps of hardwood.

And he saw the brown man, and even into the brown man’s mind—saw the slight awe the brown man felt, and the fainter tinge of disgust that such a lout should speak sense, when his own son had none. He saw the candlelight quiver on a guard’s helmet as the man shifted slightly; he saw the sides and backs of the other heads watching him. And he saw the green-eyed man, that had looked older but was only a youth, sliding a throwing knife from his sleeve, as he looked at his father.

He was back in himself, yelling “No!” in a bellow that raised dust from the boxes, and throwing himself at the brown man so fast that the guards could not react. He hit the brown man square, and knocked him sprawling, just as the blade came spinning out of the dark, catching light and flickering. It missed them both, and stuck in the floor, quivering. The guard on that side had seen the blade whirl past; he turned to face the thrower. The other guard moved forward to swing at Gird, but met instead the black-bearded man, who had yanked his sword out to take Gird from behind. Their weapons rang together, and Gird managed to roll off the brown man and get out from under them.

Then a second blade flashed through the light and caught Calis in the throat, even as he pointed a finger to the green-eyed man.

“Traitor,” he said. “Call my father in, will you? Try to warn him?” And as Calis choked in his blood and died, the green-eyed man had his own sword out, and came into the fight on his own. He caught the black-bearded man under the ribs from behind, then parried the guard’s pike stroke and danced away. “Brother in law, are thy ribs sore enough?” The black-bearded man had fallen, hardly an arm’s length from Gird, and blood rolled out from beneath his hand. The brown man scrambled back, grabbing the fallen swordsman’s weapon.

Gird saw this in a strange inside-out way which left him dazed for the moment. He had wedged himself between two boxes, and tore at one with his hands, hoping to loosen a slat he could use to fight with. Now the other three swordsmen had their weapons out—but not all on one side. Two struck at the brown man, one defended; one of the pikemen, by this time had fallen to another thrown knife, from whom Gird could not see.

Of all the outcomes to such a meeting, he’d never imagined this, a fight between nobles—and not only nobles, but father and son. Across the room, he saw one of those he thought true rebels slip toward the door. Another caught his eye, lifted spread hands. What could they do? Clearly nothing, but escape—this was no brawl for unarmed men to meddle in. He could not help watching, though, as the father stood ground over the black-bearded man, fencing cautiously against his son’s supporter. It was madness to stay—the son must have arranged his invitation, planning to blame the father’s death on a stranger, a troublemaker from another land. Yet—as he saw from the edge of his vision another of the onlookers slip out the door—yet he had to know who would win, who would be pursuing him.

The fight went on, the clash of blades surely loud enough to draw notice. None of the combatants bothered with Gird; he might have been a spectator at a wagered match. He wondered if any of those who left were going to alert the city guard. He wondered more at what he saw. The green-eyed son, for all the faults his father claimed, a most skillful swordsman, pressed his father’s ally back. The second guard, after a few cautious chopping strokes with the pike, tried to pin his opponent in a corner, but he was taken from the side, by the third man, who opened his belly. The guard groaned and sagged to the floor.

Now the brown man and one friend faced three: his son and his two allies. Gird eyed the fallen pike: he could use that if he got hold of it, but how? And to what use should he put it, besides escape—and he could escape now, if he would. Instead, he watched, fascinated, the struggle before him. The brown man, when his guard fell, gave no sign of fear or alarm, but fought the more hardily, his blows coming swift and strong against two, while his remaining friend fought his son. Yet he had to yield ground, backing away from his wounded son-in-law. The green-eyed man opened a gash in his opponent’s arm, just as the father managed to slice deeply into one of the two he faced. That one dropped his sword tip to grab at the wound, and the father’s sword slid into his neck. But not unscathed—his other opponent stabbed deeply into his thigh, and he staggered. In an instant, he recovered, so that his eager opponent, careless, found himself transfixed on a blade that pierced him to the backbone. His legs failed, and he sagged from the blade, dragging the brown man’s arm downward.

Then the son turned, from a deathstroke to his father’s friend, and raised his sword. And then Gird moved, scooped up the guard’s fallen pike, and swung it like a quarterstaff to knock the son’s sword aside. Leaping over the welter of blood and bodies, he tackled the son as he might have tackled a runaway calf, bearing him to the floor with his own great size.

Silence, curiously loud in his ears. Someone groaned; several someones breathed harshly. Under him, the green-eyed man heaved up without success; Gird put a knee in his back and dared look back at the carnage.

He met the level gaze of the brown man, the father, now tightening a belt around his bleeding thigh. When he had it knotted to his satisfaction, the brown man pushed himself to his feet, and moved unsteadily to Gird’s side, looking down with an expression Gird could not read.

“Well, Jernoth, you’ve given me quite a problem this time. What can I do with you now?”

“I never meant this—” The voice was husky and strained, with what besides Gird’s weight on his back Gird could not tell.

“Maybe not: but you meant mischief enough. What can I do?”

“Kill him,” said Gird, without thinking. The brown man’s intense gaze shifted to him.

“Kill my son? Who, if others die, might be my heir?”

Gird felt the tremor beneath him, the shiver of hope. “You’d have killed me, sir, as hasn’t done you any harm, but saved your life twice this night. Why not him, that did the harm with intent? Do you think such a one should rule—do you think he’ll be better than Kelaive?”

“Quiet, you stinking serf!” said the captive. “It doesn’t matter what you want. I’m a noble; he won’t kill me.”

Gird ignored this, and looked straight at the brown man’s drawn face. “Sir, a farmer has to cull as well as foster: it’s part of good husbandry. Isn’t a ruler like a farmer, seeking to improve the quality of his domain?”

“My son—blood of my blood—”

“Your son tried to kill you, and not even openly, in challenge. He’s the cause of all these deaths. He was plotting you say, and not for the first time. Any farmer culls stock; foresters cull trees. You’d cull us peasants. Try the knife’s edge on your own cheek, before you shave another. Sir.”

The brown man picked up the pike Gird had used, and placed the point against his son’s neck.

“Get off him.”

“Are you—?”

“Get off him, fellow.” Gird slid back, catching the son’s elbows as he tried to get his arms under him.

“He’s lost less blood than you, sir.”

“Indeed. And I’m supposed to think you care which of us lives? Such as you hate all nobles; you’d be glad to see us all dead.”

“No.” Gird sat on the son’s hips, one hand clamping the other’s elbows behind his back, and fished in his jerkin for the roll of thongs he kept handy. He got it out, plucked one from the tangle, and quickly lashed the younger man’s elbows together. “No, sir, I don’t hate you, personally. I think you don’t see clearly, but you may be trying the best you know how. At least you aren’t like Kelaive. And I’m not going to let your son up to kill you, with you so weak.”

“And you weren’t thinking of taking this pike to me if I fell?”

“No. That’s not what I’m here for.” He pushed himself up, wondering if the brown man would now swing at him with the pike. He was unhurt; he ought to be able to dodge it easily enough.

“No. I suppose you weren’t.” The brown man regarded him thoughtfully. “You were here to teach my subjects how to fight my army, but you weren’t here to play my son’s game and kill me.” His eyes closed briefly, and he sighed. “Damn. What a tangle this is—and I wonder why the city guard hasn’t been beating the door in? We’ve made noise enough. Perhaps Jernoth bought them off, too.”

“There’s no one you can trust,” said Jernoth savagely. His father let the pike rest heavier on his neck, and he was silent.

“He could be right,” the brown man said. “And I’m not sure I could fight my way home, like this.” He looked at Gird. “And what about you?”

“I’ve no wish to die, when your traitor son lives, and no wish to spend time in your dungeons, either.”

“No—damn you, fellow, you keep making calm sense when any normal serf would be shivering in a heap. The others all ran away, and I doubt they’re sleeping sound now. What are you, anyway? Have the gods laid a call on you?”

“No.” Gird shook his head firmly. “My folk followed the Lady of Peace; she teaches submission. And your gods support you.”

A clatter of boots on the street outside stopped him; something crashed into the shop beyond the door.

“You should have run when you could,” said the brown man.

“You could acknowledge my help,” said Gird. Then the guards were in the room, their torches sending wild flickers of bright orange across the calmer candlelight. They skidded to a halt, their pikes at Gird’s back.

“M’lord Sier,” said the one with a knot of bright yellow at his shoulder. “Someone reported noise—” His voice trailed away as he looked around him.

“Treachery, sergeant,” said the brown man.

“This lout?” asked the sergeant.

“No.” The brown man smiled at Gird. “That fellow came to my aid; the traitors lie dead, all but one.” He looked down at his son, and the sergeant’s breath hissed in.

“Lord—Jernoth, m’lord?”

“Lord Jernoth. And two of these others.” He pointed, and the sergeant’s breath hissed again. Clearly he recognized them all. The brown man’s orders brought him to quick attention. “Sergeant, send word—I will need a cart; I’ve been wounded. This—fellow—” He waved a hand at Gird. “If he had not saved me, you would have a new sier this night; he is a stranger, but welcome in the city for three days, for his service. See he gets a tally from the guardhouse, meals and beer; I brought nothing with me, not so much as a copper crab.”

“Yes, m’lord Sier.” The sergeant eyed Gird with dubious respect.

“And then Lord Jernoth must be straightly confined until I pass judgment; it is ill done to hurry such a decision.” This he said facing Gird directly; but somewhere in the tone of his voice, Gird sensed that he would come to follow Gird’s advice.

From there, things went smoothly; the guards bound the young man more securely, then hauled him to his feet and away. Another tended the brown man’s wounds, and yet another had already sped away with messages. The sergeant opened his belt-pouch with deliberate slowness, and pulled out a flat wooden tally, one end stamped with the Sier’s mark.

“This here’s a meal tally, good at any inn but the Goldmark or the White Wing—them’s only for nobles.” He took his dagger and made three scores across the tally. “That’s for a day’s food and beer; they’ll break off the end each time, to the next line. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” Gird wondered if he was really going to get free this easily.

The sergeant lowered his voice and went on. “What I heard was there was a meeting of conspirators, to hear a stranger, an outsider who came in to start trouble. Have any idea who that was?”

“Me, sir?” Stupidity was always a safe mask for a peasant.

“And then here you are, without a mark on you, but the Sier says you saved his life. Me, I wonder if you meant to do that—but his orders is my life, as they say, and he says let you bide here three days on free meals and beer. All I say is, you’d best be gone by sundown that third day, or the sier might have remembered something he wants to ask you. I would.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I don’t suppose you’ll be having any quiet little meetings with rebels while you’re here, either.”

“No, sir.”

“All right. Go fill your belly, and stay out of my sight.”

Gird went out into the dark street, only to be stopped by an arriving troop of guards, who let him go when he showed his tally. He tried to walk like someone with honest business, but the events of the past hour or so were beginning to touch his feelings, as well as his mind. When he got to the main square, he edged his way around it, touching the walls of one building after another, until he found the beggars’ steps.

Chapter Seventeen

“You had an interesting evening?” The old man’s voice was soft, but clearly audible. Gird jumped, then crouched quickly beside him. “Here’s your staff,” the old man said, brushing his knuckles with it, as if he could see in the dark. Gird clutched at it, consoling himself with its smooth oiled strength. If only he’d had it with him . . .

“You’d have gotten yourself killed,” the old man said, even more softly.

“You—what do you know about it?”

“Shh.” Gird felt a strong, bony hand on his forearm, and the faint warmth of the old man’s body leaning against his. In the brief silence, he was aware of other movement on the beggars’ steps, movement that might have been the restlessness of disturbed sleepers.

The old man’s body was warmer than he’d thought at first; along his right side he began to feel as if he sat before a fire. He had not thought he could sleep, but now he felt himself sinking into that warmth, as the exhaustion of the day and the night’s exertions landed on him. It was so comfortable—and he could not, at the moment, feel threatened.

He woke at dawn, when the great bells of Esea’s Hall rang out to declare the sun’s daily triumph. The sound crashed through him, shaking him out of peaceful dreams, and for an instant he thought he was being attacked. The old man’s hand on his arm quieted him. Gird looked around wildly. The others who had spent the night on the beggars’ steps were stirring, sitting up, stretching. The man beside him—was someone else. He jerked his arm back.

“Easy,” the old man’s voice said, out of a different face. “It’s just a face.” It wasn’t a very different face, after all: still old, still with the same basic shape. He looked less feeble, this morning, and was certainly not blind—“A miracle, remember? We came for that.”

“But—”

“We should find something to eat.” The old man stood, and Gird unfolded himself, less stiff than he’d expected to be. “What is that?” the old man asked.

It was the tally the guard sergeant had given him. “It’s—I can get food, at an inn. A tally from the sier.”

The old man’s wispy white brows raised. “So—the sier himself. I knew it was important, but—”

Gird had had enough of the old man, who was certainly not the helpless, tortured creature who had aroused his pity the evening before. “I will share my breakfast with you, but then—”

“You wish I would go away. I worry you, don’t I?” That face was not guileless at all; Gird was more than worried. Whatever this was—and he was no longer sure it was a man and not some kind of demon—it kept forcing him into impossible situations.

“I have business,” Gird said, through clenched teeth. “I only wanted to help you, and—”

The thin hand, so very strong, slid under his elbow and gripped his arm as if to steady a fragile, tottering oldster. “And you think I’ve brought more danger on you, more trouble. And you think I was blind, as I know you are. Come along, Gird Strongarm—I know you, and you will know me better before this day is done.”

As before, he could not shake that grip, and found himself walking where the old man willed. To the public fountain, to wash his face and hands. To a cheap inn, where he bought hot, meat-stuffed rolls from the serving window, getting double the amount because he refused the ale that the servant offered. To a crooked alley, where they leaned against the bulging wall of a baker’s oven, and ate the rolls, while cats wound around their ankles, begging. The food steadied him, and restored the town walls and streets to their normal colors, no longer bright and scintillating as if he had a fever, but ordinary, subdued, under a gray wintry sky.

“You are better now,” the old man said, still clutching his elbow. Gird looked down at him.

“In body, yes. But you—what are you?”

“What I told you. A priest of Esea, presently in difficulty with his fellow priests. You have my gratitude for your service—”

“You didn’t need me!” Fed, awake, alert, Gird had been remembering that whole sequence of events. “You only seemed hurt—you tricked me.”

“No.” The man’s voice was low. “No—I could have died. I almost did. You do not understand—you could not—all that happened to me, or what my powers are. But I was near death, when you found me: that is true. You saved my life.”

“But you healed—” Gird could not quite say it; his fingers wanted to make warding signs.

The man sighed. “Gird, we need to talk, you and I. You have done me a great service; so far I have done you only a small one, which you don’t yet realize. You do not trust me—and no, that’s not reading your mind; you smell of fear. But we should both leave this town, before we find more trouble than your strength or my powers can handle. Will you trust me for that?”

“I know I have to leave,” Gird muttered. “He said so, and—and I don’t know towns, that well. But I have tallies for two days more.”

“Which no one will be surprised if you use to get food for travel, and then leave. That’s what the sier would expect you to do. If you stay in Grahlin, they’ll begin to wonder if you have more people to meet.”

“Can I use the tallies again so soon?” asked Gird, staring at the ragged break on the end as if he thought it would speak to him. The old man chuckled, but it was a friendly chuckle.

“We don’t have to go to the same inn. Besides, the sier gives these tallies to many men—to anyone on his service that day. Didn’t you notice that the inn servant scarcely looked at you?” Gird had not noticed; he had been trying to see if anyone were following them. “You can use both tallies at one inn; tell them you want food to travel. They’ll be used to that.”

So it proved. His request brought no comment, and the servant handed over a cloth sack bulging with bread and cheese, and a jug of ale. On the old man’s suggestion, Gird had retained the bit of wood with the sier’s mark on it, left when the last of the tally was broken. That got him past the gate guards with hardly a glance. The old man had left ahead of him; Gird was tempted to go out the other gate, but felt it would not be fair.

The old man waited just out of sight of the gate, squatting in the windshadow of a tree beside the road. As Gird came alongside, he stood up and began walking with him, steadying himself with Gird’s staff.

“Let me start with what is strangest to you,” he said without preamble. “My powers and my knowledge.”

Gird grunted. He was trying to think how he was going to explain to the others that his foray into the town had been not only useless, but disastrous. They had lost their one contact; the sier knew his face. Worse, the sier knew he had active enemies. Yet they needed someone in this town; it was sitting right there where the trade road met the river road, and soldiers based here could ruin any plan he might make for the whole area. That might be more than a year away—he knew that—but still the town could not be ignored.

He jumped as the old man’s hand bit into his elbow. “Listen,” the old man said. “You need to know this.”

He did not need to know anything except how to get the old man to leave him alone, he thought sourly. They did not need a renegade priest of their enemy’s god who might revert to orthodoxy at any moment and turn them in. But the twinge of pain got his attention, and he listened unwillingly.

“I am a priest of Esea,” the old man repeated. Gird managed not to say that he knew that much. “You clearly think of Esea as a power of evil—from the way you reacted to my blessing. But Esea, in old Aare, where your lords came from, is the name we give the god of light. The sun is his visible form, but it is not the god.”

“Sunlord, Sealord, Lord of Sands and Chance . . .” muttered Gird, unwillingly.

“You learned that verse in childhood, no doubt. So far as it goes, it’s accurate enough. Our people worshipped Esea, the Sunlord—though only peasants called him Sunlord. Sealord, that’s Barrandowea. Ibbirun, the Sandlord—more feared than worshipped. And Simyits, god of chance and luck. We had other gods, many of them, including your Lady, Alyanya the fruitful.” The old man looked at Gird calmly, as a man might look at an ox he was thinking of buying. “Tell me, what do you have against Esea?”

“Esea’s the lords’ god. He brings droughts, dries springs, overlooks wells. The merin hate him, and he withers the flowers we bring to please them.”

“I see. Because you think of Esea as the Sunlord, and in dry weather you see more sun?”

Gird shrugged. “I’m no priest. But so the grannies said, in our village. If there’s a drought, never let a priest of Esea near the wells: they’ll call the sun’s curse on them, and the water will fail.”

The old man snorted. “Do they think priests need no water? That we need no food, so a failing harvest means nothing?” Then he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. It’s natural enough, that you’d blame outlander gods for your troubles, and even more natural, when your rulers are as bad as they are.”

“Yes, but you—”

“I’m human. As human as you are: not a demon, not a god. I am of the old blood, of Aare—kin to your lords, if you look at it like that.” He walked on a few paces, glanced sideways at Gird, and said, “I see you do look at it like that. And no wonder. But there is much you do not know. The old Aareans had powers, all of them, which none of your people had. Now this cold land has thinned our blood, some say, or the gods of your people have sought vengeance. I think all that is ridiculous.”

Gird fastened to the little he had understood. “You are the same blood as the lords—as that sier, or my old count?”

“Not close kin, but of the same origin—from Aare across the sea.”

“But—I have seen no powers, in the lords.” Even as he said it, he remembered the uncanny light that had come to a dusty, dark storeroom when the sier willed it. “Except—”

“Except last night. First with me, and then with the sier.” He caught Gird’s hand as he was about to make another warding sign, and said, “Stop doing that. It won’t work, because I’m not what you think, but it is annoying. You’ll convince anyone on the road I’m an illwisher.” There was no one on the road, before or behind. Gird scowled. The old man sighed. “Gird, our people had power, and now most of them don’t, or they have little. I have, and the sier has, and of course I know about the sier—I have known him for years. We have talked together, dined together—I’ve been his guest—”

Gird struggled to break the grip on his wrist; the old man was feeble—had to be weaker than he was—but he could not get free. He yanked back again and again, panting, without success. The old man merely smiled at him, a sunny, friendly smile of perfect calm and joy. “Let—me—go!” Gird said finally, when force had not worked.

“When I’m sure you have understood what I’m saying. Not until.” The same quiet smile, but Gird felt the threat behind the words.

“Understood, or accepted?” he asked, still angry.

“Understood. Esea’s Light, Gird, if I had wanted to charm the wits from you, I could have done it any time.”

“Could you?” He glared at the old man, wondering if that had been the answer all along. Had he been charmed into thinking the man hurt, charmed into taking him into the city, charmed into going unarmed into that trap? That peaceful smile seemed to fill his eyes, as if the old man were suddenly larger; warmth and peace seeped into his mind, washing the anger away. But he clung to the core of it, stubborn as a stone in the earth: he might be shifted, but he would not be changed. The old man sighed, at last, and that imposed warmth and peace left him abruptly. He was shivering in a cold wind, aware of sleet beginning to sting the left side of his face.

“Well. Maybe I couldn’t, at that. Not now, anyway. The gods must know what they’re doing.” The old man shivered now, too. But he was still smiling, if ruefully.

Gird looked around. They were on a rise, where the wind could get at them from any angle, and the sleet bit into him. The road ran on eastward, past an outcrop of rock that offered no shelter. Downslope to the right, downwind, scrubby grass thickened to knee-high scrub, and he thought he could see trees in the distance. “I’m cold,” he said. “I’m going to find shelter, and if you won’t let go of me, you’ll have to come too.” He was sure he could drag the old man, if he couldn’t get rid of him.

“Good idea,” the old man said, and nothing more until they had tramped through the scrub into the meager shelter of a leafless wood. Gird hunkered down behind a fallen log, and dug into the dry leaves. Deep enough. He pointed, and the old man crouched there, releasing Gird’s wrist. Gird found fallen branches to stack on the windward side, then piled leaves to cut the wind under the log. He kept working, as the sleet came down harder, to cut poles and make a low roof over them. The first flakes of snow floated between the chips of falling sleet as he finished, and crawled under it.

The old man had dug out the leaves to form a nest, and huddled in it. Gird put the sack of food and the jug where he could reach them, and squeezed close to the old man. He was not as cold as Gird had expected—but then he had never been as feeble as Gird expected. Beyond the edge of the shelter roof, more flakes danced. The hiss and rattle of sleet lessened, and that magical silence that heralds falling snow spread around them. Snow clung to the edges of fallen leaves, forming a fantastic tracery until more snow covered the ground in unbroken white.

Gird stared at it. He had slept fireless in winter before, and he had food and ale, but how was he going to get back to his troop? He had expected to spend some days in the town—to leave with enough food to reach the next town—and then to return, with a guide, through three different bartons. He had come to the town from the south; now he was east of it, in a country he had never seen, which was rapidly disappearing under snow. Snow in which his tracks would be all too obvious, in which he could not hope to travel unnoticed. In which he could starve, or die of cold. Beside him, the old man snored, the easy sleep of the old. He was warm enough, and unafraid—and what did he have to be afraid of, if he could heal himself of such wounds as Gird had seen? If they had been real.

Gird reached out and pulled the sack of food to him. Don’t look too far ahead, his Da had said. There are times to plan for planting and harvest, and times to eat the food at hand, and be grateful. Inside were bread, cheese, a slab of bacon, an onion. He looked at the sleeping man, and sighed, and put the sack aside again. They could share it when the old man woke.

As it happened, the old man woke before he did; Gird had not meant to fall asleep, but the silence and monotony had done it. Outside the shelter was dark, cold, and the silence. Within, the old man had made light, and radiated warmth like a hot stone. He was holding his finger—his glowing finger—to a ragged chunk of bacon, which sizzled and dripped onto bread beneath it. It had been the smell of cooking bacon which roused Gird, and it was the sight of it cooking at the old man’s touch which sent him out into the dark and cold in one panic-stricken rush.

“Come back!” the old man cried. “I was cooking it for you!”

Gird crouched in the snow, uncertain, shivering . . . half with fear, and half with the cold. Snow caressed his head, his cheeks, his arms and hands, icy kisses like those of the snow maidens that lived in the far north. The old man’s head poked out of the shelter.

“It’s all right. It won’t hurt you. I promise.” What good was the promise of someone who could cook bacon with his finger, and make light out of nothing? What good was the promise of someone who could change faces? But the smell of the bacon went right to the pit of his belly; his mouth watered. A lump of snow fell on his head, and he shuddered. Fear and warmth and food, or cold and hunger and—more fear. He was moving before he knew it, back to the shelter, praying fervently to whatever gods might be out this dark night to protect him from one old man.

Once face to face with him again, Gird could find nothing specific to fear. His hands were the gnarled and bony hands of any old man, holding out now a chunk of bread with a chunk of hot bacon on top. Gird looked at the food, but did not take it. “We must share,” he said hoarsely.

“I don’t like bacon,” the old man said, almost wistfully. “A slice of a lamb roast now, or even beef—but I never could eat bacon without trouble. Go on, you take it.”

Gird looked him in the eye. Could he not know the customs of Gird’s people? Were their people so different? “We must share,” he said again. “I cannot take food from you, if you do not take it from me.” Or rather, he thought to himself, I will not take it and put myself in that kind of relationship.

The man shrugged. “It was yours to start with, I merely cooked it. You don’t prefer it raw, do you?”

Gird sighed. Either he was ignorant, or he was being difficult. His head ached, and he didn’t want to explain it, but he was going to have to. “It’s important,” he said. “You cooked it; that means you have the hearth-right, the fire-right. I cannot take—no, I will not take your food unless you take some from my hand, because that would mean you were my—you had the right to give or withhold food, and I needed your protection.”

“Oh.” The old man looked surprised, but drew his hand back. “Is that why your people first brought food to ours when they came?”

“Did they?” Gird had no idea what had happened when the lords first came. “What did your people do?”

“Made a very large mistake, I think,” said the old man, as if to himself. “What should they have done?”

“Were they seeking aid in hunting, or against an enemy? Or were they starving?”

“No—at least not as the chronicles tell it.”

“Then if they wanted an alliance of hearthings, they should have offered food of their own, and all shared.”

The old man pursed his lips. “And what would it mean to you, if they ate the food offered, but offered none.”

“That is the way of accepting the giving hearth as the leader—as the protector.”

“Could they offer something else, in exchange? Arms, protection?”

Gird shook his head. “No—what protection could someone without food offer? The strong hearth has food to offer; the weak accepts it, and gives service for protection. If they wish friendship, it is as I said: food shared, both ways. Or more, if more than one are meeting. Famine rule, that can change things, but not always.”

“Famine rule?”

“In famine, all share equally, without obligation, even if only one provides. But it must be declared, and accepted.”

“This is worse than I thought,” said the old man, grimacing. “We were so stupid!” He put the bread and bacon down, and said, “Will you take something from the sack and share it with me?”

“I can’t cook it,” Gird said, frowning. It didn’t have to be cooked food, of course: bread was already cooked, and cheese was cured. But he had not actually provided this food—it belonged to the sier, who was an ally of the old man. Some people might argue about that. “Do you accept it as my food?”

“Yes.”

“Then I offer this cheese and bread, my hearth to yours.” Gird set the bread and cheese between them, then broke a piece from each and held out his hand. The old man took the pieces gravely, and offered Gird the bread and bacon again. This time Gird took it, hoping the bacon was still hot. But he waited until the old man had taken a bite before taking one of his own. The old man had not said the ritual words, but he was sure of the intent, and between only two, that was enough.

The bacon was still warm, and succulent; the grease-soaked bread made a comfortable fullness in his belly. Gird ate quickly, wasting no time, but his mind was full of questions. As soon as he had gulped down the last bite of bread, he turned to the old man.

“What did you mean, your people had made a mistake?”

The old man, eating more slowly, had not finished; he swallowed the cheese in his mouth before answering. “Gird, among my people the customs differ. Offering food is the sign of subservience: servants offer food to masters. I’m afraid when your people came bringing food, my people thought they were acknowledging their lower rank.”

Gird sat quietly a moment, thinking this over. The food-bringers, food-givers, ranked lower? When everyone knew that those who can afford to give without taking in return are the wealthy and strong? It was backwards, upside down, inside out: no one could live with a people who believed that. They would kill each other. They would believe—that the strong and wealthy are those who can take without giving—He found he was saying this aloud, softly, and the old man was nodding. “But that’s wrong,” he said loudly. His vehemence was swallowed in the snow, lost in that white quiet. “It can’t work. They would always be stealing from each other, from everyone, to gain their place in the family.”

“Not quite,” said the old man. He sighed heavily. “Then again, maybe that’s part of the reason why things have gone so badly up here. Back in Aare, there were reasons for that, and safeguards. At least, I think so. It had to do with our magic, our powers.”

“Like the light. And cooking with your finger?”

“Among other things, yes. Among our people, rank came with magic—the more magic, the higher rank. One proof of magic was the ability to take, either by direct magic, or by compelling—charming—someone to offer whatever it was as a gift.”

Gird thought carefully around that before he let himself answer, but it was the same answer that sprang first to mind. “But how is that different from the bullying of a strong child, who steals a weaker’s food, or threatens him into giving it up? It is stealing, to take like that.” And it was precisely what the lords had been doing, he thought. What they had always done, if this man was telling the truth.

The old man also waited before answering, and when he spoke his voice was slower, almost hesitant. “Gird, our people see it as the natural way—as calves in a herd push and shove, seeking dominance, as kittens wrestle, claw and bite. Yet this doesn’t mean constant warfare in a herd, only a mild pushing and shoving: the weaker ones know their place, and walk behind—”

“But men are not cows!” Gird could not contain his anger any longer; he felt as if it were something physical, bright as the light he still did not understand. “We are not kittens, or sheep, or birds squabbling in a nest—”

“I know.” The old man’s voice, still quiet, cut through his objection as a knife cuts a ripe fruit. “I know, and I know something has gone very wrong. But in our own home, in Aare, that sparring for dominance among our folk had its limits, and those limits were safe enough to let our people grow and prosper for many ages. We were taught—I was taught—that with such power comes great responsibility—that we were to care for those we governed as a herdsman cares for his herd—No, don’t tell me, I understand. Men are not cattle. But even you might use that analogy—”

And he had, the night before, talking to the sier. Gird shivered, not from cold, when he thought of it. No wonder it had gone home, if the man thought of his common folk as cattle already.

“I still think it’s wrong,” Gird said.

“It may be. But right or wrong, it’s the other way ’round from your people, and that means my people didn’t understand them from the beginning. We assumed your people intended to submit, agreed to it without conflict: that’s what our chronicles say. So whenever your people resisted, our people thought of that as a broken contract—as if you had gone back on your word.”

Gird tried to remember what he had heard of the lords’ coming. Very little, though he had heard new things from the men he had been training. Most of the stories began after that, with the settlements growing near the new forts and towns, with the “clearing” of old steadings, the forced resettlement of families, the change in steading custom to conform to the new village laws. Everyone had thought the lords knew they were unfair, knew they were stealing—but had they not known? Had they thought that all they did was right, justified by some agreement that had never been made?

“Not all,” the old man said. “Some things were forbidden in old Aare, which our people do here. The worship of the Master of Torments, for example: that they know is evil, and those who do it are doing it knowingly against the old laws. A contest of strength or magery is one thing, but once it is over, the winner has obligations to the loser, as well. But the basic misunderstanding, Gird, I believe I discovered tonight, from you. Your way seems as strange to me, I confess, as mine must seem to you—but strangeness is not evil. What we do with it may be evil.”

“When you offered me that food,” Gird said, “were you then declaring yourself lower in rank? Or were you trying to fool me into thinking that’s what you were doing?”

The old man started to answer, then stopped, then finally said, “I thought—I think I only meant to calm you, to make you think well of me. In one sense, that is claiming a lower rank, because it means I care that you think well of me—in another—I don’t know. I didn’t think, I just did it.”

“I felt,” Gird said carefully—carefully, because he did not want to hurt this old man, even now, “I felt like a stubborn animal, being offered a bait of grain if it will only go through the gap.”

A grin, across that close space. “You are stubborn; you would not deny that. I did not mean you to feel that, but given what your people think about offering food, wouldn’t anyone feel so in such a circumstance? Have you ever—”

“Yes.” Had the men he had fed felt that way? Demeaned, degraded? But it was not always so; he had taken food himself, gladly, acknowledging temporary weakness. Sick men had to be fed by healthy men, children by adults, infants by mothers. Was milk from the breast demeaning to a baby? Of course not. Yet—he worried the problem in his mind, coming at it from one side then another. The old man sat quietly and let him alone. “There are times,” he said, “when it is right to be the one fed. Times no one minds. If someone’s sick or hurt—or children—but grown folk, healthy grown folk—they feed themselves. In a way, living on another’s bounty is like being a child again. Maybe that’s why it means giving obedience.”

“Probably.” The old man nodded. “It’s interesting that you have the importance of having food to give, but absolute prohibition against taking it by force from each other. The force is used against the land, I suppose, in hunting or farming.”

“Not against,” Gird corrected. “With. To help the land bear more. Alyanya is our Lady, not our subject.”

“So you see even the gods as those who can give, not those who take?”

“Of course. If they have nothing to give, they are not gods, but demons.” Gird nodded at the cold dark beyond their shelter. “As the cold demons steal warmth, and the spirits of night steal light from the sun.”

The old man smiled. “This day is stealing my strength, Gird, and I cannot hold this light much longer. Not if I’m to have warmth enough until dawn. But before the light goes. I have an apology. I have withheld the courtesy of my name, although I knew yours. I am Arranha, and I am glad to have you as companion in this adventure.”

Gird turned the name over in his mind; it was like nothing he had heard. “I thought the lords had many names—four or five.”

“So they do, but priests have only one, and mine is Arranha.” With a last smile, Arranha let the light fail—the light Gird had yet to understand, and the cold, snow-clean air gusted for a moment under the shelter. Gird felt Arranha curling up in his leafy nest, and thought of walking away. But he could not blunder through a wood in the dark and snow, not and hope to live until morning. With a silent but very definite curse, he lay down, wriggling his way into the leaves until he was curled around Arranha. His back was cold, but Arranha, protected on the inside, was warm as a hearth. Gird was sure he could not sleep—then began to worry that they might sleep their way into death in the cold—and then slid effortlessly into peace and darkness.

Chapter Eighteen

The next morning was cold and raw but Arranha was awake, and a milder warmth filled their shelter. Gird rubbed his eyes, and looked out to see snow covering all, under a gray sky: the light was silvery. The old man sat hunched, staring at his hands. Gird watched him warily. Was he about to do something? Was he doing something now, something Gird could not see? Then a cramp in his back jabbed him, and he had to stretch. Arranha turned to him, and Gird continued with a yawn that cracked his jaws.

“Sorry,” he said afterwards, but even to himself he did not sound sorry. Arranha merely smiled. Silently, he divided the rest of the bread and cheese, and Arranha shared it. The jug, when he shook it, was full. He looked at the old man, who smiled again.

“I filled it with snow, and melted it. It’s not ale, but it will do.” Gird sipped, found it water with only the faintest taste of the ale that had been in the jug, and drank thirstily. Arranha went on. “It is not snowing now, and I think it will not for some hours. If you wanted to travel, now is a good time.”

Gird scratched his jaw beneath his beard. “What about you? I would help you to someplace safe.”

Arranha laughed aloud. “Safe? For me? Gird, I am safer with you than anywhere else I can think of, in the world of men.”

“But surely you have friends—”

“None so rash as to harbor me now, when Esea’s Hall of priests has declared me heretic and traitor. They intended to kill me, Gird—you saw that.”

“But—sir—” Gird tried to think how to put it. The man was a priest, and had great powers, but he would hardly be accepted by Gird’s troop of peasant rebels. He began as delicately as he could. “I have my work—you seem to know that, and what it is—and the people I work with, my people, they—they won’t take to you.”

Arranha showed neither anger nor surprise. “You do not want me with you?”

Gird found he was scratching his ear, this time. “Well—it’s nothing against you yourself, but—you’re one of them, sir. One of the lords, and that’s who we’re trying to fight. Sir.”

“Do you know what you’re fighting for, Gird, or is it all against?” Gird must have looked as puzzled as he felt, for Arranha explained. “Do you have a vision of something better, a way to live that you want, or are you fighting only against the lords’ injustice and cruelty?”

“Of course we have ideas,” Gird said. They were bright in his mind, those pictures of what the world should be like. He was sitting at the old scarred table in his own cottage, with Mali and the children around it, all of them with food in their bowls, laughing and talking. In the cowbyre were his three favorite cows, all healthy and sleek; his sheep were heavy-fleeced and strong. He could look around the room and see his mother’s loom with a furl of cloth half-woven, tools on their hooks, Mali’s herbs in bunches, the sweet smell of a spring evening blowing in the window. Outside would be the fields, with the grain springing green from the furrows, the smallgarden already showing the crisp rosettes of vegetables, the beans reaching for their poles with waving tendrils. From other cottages as well he could hear the happy voices, even someone singing. He felt safe; he knew the others felt safe. That was what he wanted, what they all wanted.

“Can you tell me?” asked Arranha gently.

Gird tried, but the memories were too strong, too mixed: sweet and bitter, joyful and sorrowful, all at once. His voice broke; his eyes filled with tears that were hot on his cheeks, and cold on his jaw. “It’s just—just peace,” he said.

Arranha sighed. “Coming to peace by starting a war is tricky, Gird. You’ve never known war; I have.”

Gird set his jaw, and blinked back the tears. “It’s war enough, when my family and my friends die for nothing.”

“No. It’s bad, but it’s not the same. You’re starting something bigger than you can see. Much bigger. You need a better idea of where you’re going, what you will need. Do you know anything at all about law?”

Gird sniffed, rubbed his nose on his arm, and thought about it. Law. There were the customs of his village, and the customs all his people shared, from the days when they lived in steadings within a hearthing. Then there were rules the lords made, and that law he had had to memorize when he was a recruit. “A little,” he said cautiously. Arranha looked at him, as if wondering what that meant, and sighed again.

“This is going to take longer, and it would go better in a warmer place. Where would you go from here?”

The abrupt change of topic jarred; Gird wondered what the old man was up to. Something, surely. But he was tired of arguing, of his own emotions. Let the old man come along, at least for now. “We left the city by the east gate,” Gird said. “And then we walked east, and then south but only a little. So back south, and a little west—I don’t know this country well, up here.”

“The way you’re speaking of, there’s a village called Burry—is that what you meant?”

“Aye.” In Burry, the barton was already five hands strong, and the yeoman marshal had relatives in three other villages.

“Can we reach Burry today?”

“No. But there’s a place—” Gird did not want to talk about it, and Arranha did not press him. He ducked out of the shelter, into the distanceless light of a cloudy day over snow. They were going to leave tracks, clear ones, and the place they had slept would be obvious even if he tried to take down the shelter. But he could not see the road from here, or hear any travelers. Perhaps no one would happen by until another snowfall.

He led Arranha further into the wood, away from the road. The silence scared him; it felt unnatural. He reminded himself that he was not used to being away from a village in winter. Even near camp, he could hear the noises of other people. It might be nothing but this unfamiliarity that had his neck hair standing up, a tension in his shoulders. Arranha picked his way through the snow with little apparent effort, though he left tracks. Gird made sure to look, every so often.

When they came to the trail Gird had taken toward the city two days before, he almost walked across it without recognition. Its white surface lay smooth in both directions, trackless. He turned and led Arranha along it, as he looked for the place they could shelter overnight.

It was getting darker, and he was afraid he might not recognize it in snow, when he spotted the three tall cedars above a lower clump, and turned off the trail. Arranha had said nothing for hours. Now he said, “Is this a village?”

“No—it’s an old steading. Cleared by your folk, to settle a village.” He wasn’t sure that was why it had been abandoned; it might have been much older than the lords’ coming. “It’s empty,” Gird added. “No one lives here, or nearby.” He pushed through the bushy cedar boughs, shivering as they dumped their load of snow on him, and entered the old steading. He bowed, courteously, to the old doorstep, still centered between the upright pillars that had held the door. On either side, broken walls straggled away, outlining the shape of the original buildings in brushstrokes of stone against the white snow.

When he looked back, Arranha had pushed through the cedars as well, and was bowing as Gird had, though he looked uncertain of his welcome. So he ought, Gird thought. This was old; this had belonged to no one but his own people, and Arranha was a stranger.

“Do you know how many lived here?” Arranha asked.

Gird shook his head. “It was a steading; my Da said a steading was three or so families. Less than a village—four hands, five? A large steading might have more, but I think this one was small.” He led the way again, past the empty useless doorway, along what had been the outside of the main building, to an angle of low wall in what had been an animal shed or pen. Here two corners had survived the original assault and subsequent weather, to nearly enclose a space just over an armspan wide, and two armspans long. Gird thrust his hand into the cold snow in the larger space outside, feeling about, and grunted. “Here—help me lift this.” This was a lattice, woven of green withes and vines, and lightly covered with leaves; it would have been unnoticeable lying flat among the ruins. Now, it fitted across the space between the walls, an instant roof.

“You knew this was here—you had it ready!” Arranha sounded excited for the first time.

Gird let himself grin. “Aye. Thought it up. Looks like nothing but old walls, but it’s as good as a house. Almost.” He had lifted his end carefully, so that the snow did not slide off; it was heavier that way, but it would look less obvious. He hoped. When they had it braced in place, he looked at it again. Those two side walls had been intended to support a slanted roof, he was sure—he hoped his roof would slant enough to drip on the wall, not inside. The end wall should be lying within the enclosed space; he reached into the snow again, and found the end. He pulled it out, careful to bring its load of snow with it. This piece was light enough for one to move; he shifted it until it almost closed the gap. Now they had a small house, its walls chest-high, topped with a slanted roof with its back to the north wind. Its floor was almost snow-free, because that snow had come out with the end wall.

“You thought this up?” asked Arranha.

“Not all of it. I thought of wattle for temporary roofs, in our camps, but others thought of leaving sections where we might need them. And a man in Burry thought of putting the piece down where you might want no snow when the shelter was built.” As he talked, Gird braced the foot of the wattle enclosing the end with rocks. His hands began to go numb; he blew on them. Then he reached into his jerkin, and brought out one of his thongs. “We have to tie the roof on, or any little puff will blow it away.” Arranha took the hint, and began lacing the roof to the end hurdle.

Inside the shelter, it was quite dark. Gird felt around in the protected corner, and found the dry sticks he’d bundled, and the little sack of meal. He thought of the time it was going to take to start a fire with a firebow, and sighed. It would be sensible to ask Arranha to start the fire with his finger—if that worked, and if it cooked bacon it should—but he hated to ask a favor of a lord.

“If you would let me, I will start the fire,” Arranha said quietly. Gird backed out of the shelter and looked at him. No visible haughtiness, just an old man pinched with cold after a long day’s walk in the snow.

“In that far corner, then. There’s wood; I’ll find more.”

Arranha nodded and ducked inside the shelter. Gird did not stay to watch; he gathered an armload of wood, and came back to a shelter that let chips of light out between the chinks of the wattle.

Inside was warmth and firelight—none of Arranha’s magicks. Was Arranha tired, or simply being tactful? Gird did not know, or care; he was glad enough to see a warm fire. The jug was nestled near the fire, and Arranha had found the niche in the wall with the cooking bowl. He had poured the meal into the bowl, but looked as if he did not know what to do next.

“Let me.” Gird reached for the bowl, and felt the side of the pot. Warm, but not hot enough. He scrabbled around the floor of the shelter for small pebbles and pushed them into the fire. “For cooking,” said Gird, to Arranha’s surprised look. “I’ll drop them in the jug, to make the water hot quicker. That way it won’t crack the pot.”

By the time the mush was done, Gird was ready to eat the bowl as well. He swallowed hard, handed the bowl to Arranha first, and forced himself to match spoonful for spoonful the pace Arranha set. They scraped the bowl clean; with a sigh, Gird took it outside to scrub it clean with snow. After a final visit to the outside—Gird insisted on showing Arranha the proper place to use as jacks—they came back to the fire, ready enough for a night’s sleep.

Or so Gird expected. Instead, Arranha did whatever he did to brighten the light until Gird could see as clearly as in daylight. From the recesses of his clothes, he pulled a scroll. Gird blinked. The man had been naked; Gird had given him a shirt. Then he had had clothes of some kind—but Gird still didn’t have his shirt back—and now he was taking things he had not had out of clothes he had not had. He did not like this. But the alternative was, again, a cold night alone in the woods—and here was warmth and light and someone alive. He gave Arranha the look he would have given one of his men who pulled a stupid trick, but Arranha did not react to it.

Arranha pointed to the scroll. “Can you read that?” Gird peered at it, his long-forgotten struggles with reading sending cold sweat to his brow. The list looked familiar, the lengths of line and numbers made it certain.

“No—but I know what it is. It’s the Rule of Aare. I’ve seen it before; we had to learn it in the Kelaive’s Guard.”

“And what does it mean?” Gird stared at him, and Arranha nodded encouragingly. “The first one, for instance. What does it mean—how does it tell you to live?”

“Surrender none,” said Gird. “That’s obvious enough. Grab and hold what you’ve got. Don’t quit. Don’t give anything up.”

“And what is ‘anything’?”

“Anything—oh, lands, I suppose. Money. Power. Whatever they’ve got that they value—”

“Value,” said the priest, in that tone that made Gird think he meant more than he said. “Things of value—think, Gird.” He was thinking, and it made him restless. He wanted the ale he had had the night before, to ease the ache in his joints. He wanted to get out of this cold cramped shelter and take a walk across open, sunlit fields. He scowled, hoping that it would pass for thought, and ready to be angry if the priest laughed. The priest did not laugh. “Value,” he said again. “Gird, what do you value most?”

“Me?” All the usual answers raced through his mind: money, food, ale, the pleasures of the body, possessions, a better bull for his cows. Then slower, deeper, the people he knew, the way of life he wanted to live. But for that he had no words, no way to say it. “Not just money,” he said slowly. “Not things to buy or use, exactly. Friends—a good master, fair dealing in the market and at tax time—family—” Children, he would have said, but it was ill-luck to name them.

“Peace,” said the priest, casting that name over ordinary life without turmoil or undue trouble, as Gird himself had said that morning. “Justice.” And that stood for all the fair dealing, market or court or steward’s assessment, for a lord who would not trample young grain on a hunt, or refuse the use of medicinal herbs in his wood. “Love,” the priest said last, and it covered family and friends well enough, all the complicated relationships that made a life more than existence.

“But the law—” began Gird. The priest held up his hand, and Gird stopped short.

“The old law,” said the priest, “said nothing of peace or justice or love, because everyone agreed on their importance. And the first Rule, ‘Surrender none’ meant precisely that none of these should be given up: not peace, not justice, not love.”

“But—” began Gird again, and again the priest stopped him.

“Surrender none,” the priest repeated, this time in a tone of command that would, Gird was sure, have held an army spellbound. “None—none of the Rules themselves, and none of the great goods the Rules were intended to preserve. Our people have forgotten that. Our priests have forgotten that. We have taught them the wrong meanings of those simple commands, and it is these, acted out, which brought them to such actions as trouble you. They think they are meant to grasp more and more, and hold it tightly, sharing it with none, when they were meant to surrender no opportunity of doing right, of spreading Esea’s light, the High Lord’s justice, Alyanya’s peace.”

Gird thought of the other Rules, so painfully learned when he was a recruit. If indeed the first meant that, then how could the second, the third, be interpreted? “One, for me, and one, for you” had looked, to a peasant boy, like a clear description of the present situation: one rule for the masters, and one for the serfs.

“No,” said the priest, with a sigh. “It’s easily read that way, and that is in fact the way they read it now, paying tribute to Simyits the Two-faced, the Trickster, the lightfingered lord of luck and gambling. But it reminds us to share, as children do, as we did tonight—one spoonful for you, and one for me. Your people do the same.”

“But the others?”

“Define the vigilance necessary to protect the code: touch not, nor ask, nor interfere, where it is not necessary, where it is not your business; but if it is, then go far, swift, silently—never let justice lack because of distance or time or idle chatter. Face the door, yes: evil overwhelms the careless. Learn all the arts, to judge fairly, but staying alive is imperative, or the good judge cannot exist to judge.”

“It’s—it’s like a grape-leaf,” said Gird, his mind awhirl. “On one side dark green, shiny, and on the other silvery fuzz—can it be the same Rules? And even if it is, what matter to us? We were never of them.”

“Gird, if a man use a stick to beat a cow, instead of guide it, does that make the stick evil? Would you burn the stick, for being a bad stick, or clout the man?”

“The man, of course, but—”

“The Rules of Aare were a tool of law, a stick, if you will—once men used them well, to guide themselves to better actions, and now they use them badly, to beat other men. You’re going to need a stick like that; before you throw this one on the fire, take another look at it.”

“It still sounds like trickery,” said Gird. He looked closely at the priest, watching for anything he could interpret. Nothing but interest. “If the Rules can be read both ways, then there’s something wrong with them. Why not write laws that can’t be read wrong?”

“Try it,” said the priest. A smile twitched his lips. Gird felt the back of his neck getting hot. Somehow the man had made a trap, and he’d walked in. Even though he didn’t feel the teeth yet, it was still a trap.

“I could,” he muttered sourly, thinking hard. What was the trap? “It’s not that hard to say a man shouldn’t steal his neighbor’s sheep, or put offal down his neighbor’s well.”

“And if the sheep got into his garden, or the neighbor had stolen something from him?”

“If we had fair courts, to settle the first problem—”

“Very good. And how will you make fair courts?”

The priest was taking him seriously. The trap must have very fine teeth, because he couldn’t feel them yet, and the man was asking what he’d thought about before.

“Fair courts should have someone who knows something about the argument—the kind of argument—”

“Another serf?” asked the priest. This was extraordinary, and Gird paused to look again for any signs of ridicule. None.

“I’ve wondered about that,” he said cautiously. “A farmer to judge disputes between farmers, a tanner to judge between tanners. But then if a farmer and a tanner have an argument, who? If it’s someone who started as a peasant, say, then he’d need some training, same as if he wanted to be a soldier.”

“Let’s suppose you have your judge,” said the priest. “A fair man, who knows enough of both sides to understand it, then what?”

“Plain laws that anyone can understand,” said Gird. “Fair dealing between master and man, between crafter and crofter. If the law says ‘no stealing’ that’s plain enough—”

“And what is stealing?” asked the priest.

“Taking what’s not yours,” said Gird. “That’s obvious.”

“But think, Gird. We all take some things that aren’t ours: air, water, sunlight and starlight—”

“The water in my well was mine.” Gird clung to that. Air? Sunlight? He’d never thought of himself as “taking” them. There was plenty left for everyone else.

“The water in your well came from somewhere else, and someone else put it there. Have you done one thing to make it grow, as you work to make your cabbages grow?”

“No.” He’d never thought of it that way. It was his well, as it had been his father’s well, and he had felt lucky to have a well of his own. His well, his water. But he had worked, himself, to get each year’s crop of barley and oats and cabbages and onions, to take the cows to be bred, to birth the calves. He himself had fed and brushed his animals, pruned and manured his trees, plowed and harrowed and planted and harvested his fields. The water was just there, more in a wet year and less in a dry year, but always there, without his thought. Given, like the air and the light. And he had taken.

“Would you call that stealing from the gods?” asked Gird. Or, he wondered to himself, were the gifts of flowers and herbs to the merin spirits really a form of payment, and not praise?

“No, I think not. They gave us to this world, and gave to it also those things we need and cannot make for ourselves, by any labor. To take a gift is not stealing. But I wanted you to think about your law. If you want more than riots, if you want more than killing the magelords and then each other, you must have law.”

Before he could stop himself, Gird blurted “But I don’t know anything about it.”

Arranha smiled. “You were just saying you knew what kind of laws you wanted. And once you knew nothing about fighting, but you learned. You can learn this, if you care enough about it.”

“From you?”

“From me you can learn some, but not all. You don’t trust me, even now—” He looked closely at Gird, as if to see into his mind. Gird hoped the uneasy feeling inside wasn’t the priest’s inner sight. “So we must find you teachers better suited to your nature and experience. What do you know of the kapristi, the gnomes?”

“The gray rockfolk? Dire fighters, fair dealers, is what I’ve heard. Not much friends with humans—”

“Not with our folk,” the priest agreed. “Before we came your people had no problem with them. Some of ours . . . well, you’ve heard me admit that our folk have gone widely astray from Esea’s path, and not alone in their treatment of you. Some of the wildest thought the kapristi were easy prey, being small and seeming meek. Tried to hunt them, ahorse and afoot. Ignored their boundary markers, tried to move you peasants onto their land to farm or mine.”

“And?”

“And were deservedly killed by the kapristi. That’s not what my former colleagues would say, of course, but it’s true. They never tried to invade human lands, or attacked humans where they had not been attacked. But once roused, those small gray folk are as dangerous fighters as any you could hope to train. As well, they live by a code of law that they boast is the fairest and most settled in all the worlds and peoples.”

Gird could not keep back a grin. “There is such a law?”

“They claim so. I have met them myself, Gird, as a student of law. They like my people little, but they were fair and just with me. But it is a strict law, so strict that I doubt you’ll find humans agree to follow it. They take no excuses, the kapristi, as they make none; they value fair exchange so highly that they believe free gifts are dangerous, fostering slackness. Would you go so far?”

“No, among our people, gifts are a sacred duty. Alyanya’s blessings are gifts—”

“Yet the gnomes would say you return fair exchange, duties of worship, for such apparent gifts, or the gods take vengeance. That’s their explanation for what’s gone wrong with our people. Impiety, failure to return proper service, and the gods punish by withholding the gifts.”

“And what do you say?”

Arranha sighed, “I say that my people have erred, by being ungenerous. We value free gifts, even if we misinterpreted your people’s offer of food. Perhaps free gifts are dangerous for gnomes; for humans I think they are necessary. But with the loss of powers came fear, so our people grasp more, and give less, than they did. This hurts you, and you, in turn, will hurt them. That cycle has no end, unless you wish it—unless you declare an end, someday, and forgive the rest of the injury.”

Gird felt his forehead knot. “What has that to do with justice?”

Arranha smiled at him, serene once more. “You will find out, Gird, when it is time.”

Gird felt unaccountably grumpy at that, as if he were a child being told to ignore adult concerns for now. He was, after all, a grown man—widowed—the father of grown children. Arranha seemed to read this on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to confuse you. You are no child; I know that. But I do not know myself exactly why the god sent me to you, or you to me. I was as surprised as you, when you stumbled onto me in that ditch. The god wants something from both of us—”

“Not your god!” Gird said.

“Then yours. Believe me or not, as you will, but I have been a priest, a true priest, and I know: your god has shaped your life to some purpose, and I am now part of that purpose. I think—I believe—that some part of that is helping you learn how to shape the future beyond the coming war. Whoever leads your people needs to know more than soldiering.”

Gird ducked his head. Of course he had thought about it, wondered if the gods had drawn him toward the leadership that now seemed certain. But it did not do to question them too closely, to bring yourself to their notice. The old man was strange, too strange; he wished he’d never found him. And yet—something about him attracted, as the warmth of a fire in cold attracted. Certainly he knew that they must plan for something beyond war; it was what had bothered him since Norwalk.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

“But you will,” Arranha said softly. “You will know because you must know, and you will teach others.”

Suddenly this solemnity in a tattered shelter in snowy woods, this serious discussion of legalities and philosophies, struck Gird as ridiculous. He snorted. “Aye—I can see now: the great gods who could choose you or anyone else will choose a peasant who can hardly read—a serf and son of a serf, who is better with cows than people—to teach a whole people about law. That’s wisdom.”

Arranha leaned forward. “Do not mock them, Gird. If they have chosen you—and I think they have, and you suspect it, beneath that banter—they will make you what they need. Better clay that can be shaped to their will, and then fired, than broken shards of earlier firings.”

The laughter had gone, fleeing down the hollow corridors of his mind a nameless fear. “I am not mocking,” Gird said. “I was wishing for miracles.”

“Those, too, you may have. For now, you have me: no miracle, but an Aarean with some small magicks.”

“Which once I would have called miracles,” said Gird, sighing. “Well, Arranha, you may be right. But at the moment I cannot stay awake.” The old man chuckled, released his light, and Gird fell asleep in the glow of the banked coals of their fire.

The next morning was colder, but brighter, as the clouds began to break and a thin sunlight poked through them. Gird and Arranha dismantled the shelter; Gird gathered more wood to replace what they’d used, and tucked it into the corners of the walls. Arranha watched as Gird tried to scatter snow over the wattle sections, now laid flat again. Gird wondered if the face he wore now was truly his own, healed of the injuries, or a face maintained by magic (how?) to fool him. And how was the barton at Burry going to react to this man? He could not lie to them, and pretend Arranha was other than he was.

“Do you ever wonder how our magicks work?” asked Arranha when they had started along the trail.

Gird, who was ahead, swinging his arms to warm up, shook his head. “I never saw any, until I met you. Not save the healer’s hands that some have, to take away the pain and lay it aside.”

“Your people have that?” Arranha’s voice had sharpened.

“Some of them. Not many.” The cold air speared into his lungs; he had to talk in short gasps, and wished Arranha would ask no more. But he could feel the pressure of Arranha’s curiosity at his back, as if it were a stinging fly between his shoulders.

“You’ve seen it yourself?”

“Felt it m’self. Take the pain of a headache, or a blow. Lay it aside, on something doesn’t feel pain, like a rock.” He blew out a great cloud of steam, trying for rings. It was good luck to blow rings, the holy circle. “Most of ’em use herbs, for fevers. Singing charms, for demons, if they have the parrion—” He stopped, aware of the intensity of Arranha’s interest. Had he said more than he should?

“Singing charms—” murmured Arranha. “Esea’s light, what we’ve missed! What’s a parrion, Gird?”

“Parrion’s a girl’s—” Well, how could he explain? “It’s—what a mother gives—or an aunt—family things. My mother, she had a parrion of weaving. Certain patterns were hers, and the loom—but it’s not like giving someone a cow. The steading—the family—knows a girl’s ability. Her parrion is that, plus what the women give her. I don’t know all of it; men don’t have parrions, exactly.”

“So that’s it! Gird, in the old chronicles, my people record that yours used to have a group of elders in each—steading, is it?—and mentioned parrion. But it’s not recorded what that was.”

Gird nodded, on surer ground now. “Three elders, there were. One was of the hunters, one of the growers, and one of the crafters. The hunter was a man, the crafter a woman, and the grower might be either.”

“And the crafters were weavers? Potters?”

“Toolmakers, builders, anything we made. Of course all know something of it—anyone can build a wall.” Even as he said it, Gird wondered. Anyone could build a wall if someone good at building walls gave directions. Some walls were better than others.

“Hmm. Did women make weapons?”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t they?”

Arranha crunched along several strides before answering. “Among our people, it’s thought bad luck to let women make weapons. Their blood shed during the making could weaken the weapon’s hunger for blood, make it weak.”

Gird stopped short and turned; Arranha nearly crashed into him. “Blood weaken? You mean you don’t blood your hearths, or your foundations?” From the shocked expression on Arranha’s face, they did not. Gird’s mind whirled. These lords were even stranger than he’d thought. To take food without giving meant strength, but bloodshed meant weakness: another refusal to give, he thought that was. Yet they had magical power to heal themselves—why should they be afraid to give blood where it was needed? And what would this mean in a war? He was not about to explain the power of giving blood to this alien priest. But Arranha was quick, he had seen it for himself. His eyes widened even more, and his mouth fell open.

“It’s—the giving again. Esea! I would never have thought of that. The food giver is stronger—the blood giver is stronger—and that’s why our people found women ruling your steadings. And that’s why your people follow Alyanya: the Lady gives harvest—food—and blood. I—am—amazed.” He shook his head, like someone recovering from a hard blow. Then, softly. “And I see that you can never accept our laws. If you are to have your own, you will have to forge them from your own beliefs.”

Gird, although he heard this, felt a fierce exultation warming his whole body. He had been afraid of the lords so long, afraid of their cruelty, their wealth, their power. It had never occurred to him that they might be afraid, that they might be weak where his own people were strong.

But Arranha was still talking. “Gird, remember: if this is the strength of your people, and you are their proper leader, then it will be demanded from you—you will be their symbol—”

Gird shrugged. “Do you think I’m afraid to give?”

Arranha looked at him a long moment. “No—you’ve shown that you can. But I think you do not understand how much you may have to give—”

Gird shrugged again, this time irritably. “I may die; I know that. It’s likely. We all may. More than that, no man can give.” Arranha started to say something, closed his mouth, and shook his head. Gird cocked an eyebrow at him, but the old man merely waved for him to lead the way.

So what had that been about, Gird wondered, as he continued toward Burry. He had already lost his wife, most of his children, his home, his beloved cows (he wondered who was milking the dun cow, and if she had settled again). The children he had left might die, and that would hurt—that would worse than hurt; he knew he could hardly live through it, if more happened to Rahi or Pidi or Girnis. He himself could be captured, tortured, killed—but he could not imagine anything else. And by being where he was, he had consented to those losses, if they were demanded of him.

“I still think you should talk to the gnomes,” Arranha said suddenly, after a long silence.

“I don’t know any gnomes,” Gird said. That should settle that. Besides, he had a winter’s work to do with the bartons, keeping the training going. He would send someone else to recruit in another town, someone who had been in a town before, maybe.

“I do,” Arranha said. “They have much you need to know. For example, leaving law aside, have you ever drilled two or three cohorts together? Do you know how to place them on a battlefield when cavalry threatens? Do you know what to do about archers? Or the kinds of magical weapons my people have?”

“We won at Norwalk against cavalry. We practice pushing men off horses,” said Gird, feeling stubborn. Of course it wasn’t really pushing men off horses; it was pushing men off logs, and he had to hope it was much the same thing. Arranha had said that the gnomes had fought the Aarean lords—and won. He would like to know how they’d done it. What he could remember of the sergeant’s lectures on tactics had most to do with controlling unruly crowds, clearing the village square, hunting wolves. He had a sudden terrible vision of what his ignorance could mean if he led all his bartons out to battle and did something stupid—so stupid that the lords won easily, and his own people were dying, captured. He shook his head, banishing that ill-luck.

“Besides,” he said, “you say the gnomes give nothing away. Why should they teach me soldiering for nothing? Or law?”

“You might have something valuable to trade,” Arranha said. Gird waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. So what did he have? Nothing but his own strength, the allegiance (for now) of some hands of half-trained peasants, his own burning desire for peace and justice. Arranha had said the lords violated the gnomish borders. But would they trade for that, when they could defend themselves as well as Arranha said? Would they trade bad neighbors for good?

“Would you talk to the gnomes if they would talk to you?” asked Arranha, breaking into this line of thought.

Soldiering beyond what his sergeant had taught, ways to make laws fair for everyone. Would it work? He had nearly got himself killed in that town, for knowing so little; he did not want to be the one to get all his men killed. And he did want peace, and justice, on the other side of battle. What would the others think, if he went to the gnomes? He thought about that. He had good marshals, now, who could keep the camps going, keep the bartons going, until he came back. It would be a season or more, he knew. But was he trusting Arranha because of some wicked magic?

“I will think about it,” he said, looking back to see Arranha’s expression. “I would need to tell my—my friends.”

“Of course. If you would take my advice, go to them without me—so you can be sure there is no power of mine involved—and discuss it. If they agree, and you agree, then I will take you.”