Surrender None

Prologue

“Esea’s light on him,” muttered the priest, as the midwife mouthed, “Alyanya’s sweet peace,” and laid the wet pink newborn on his mother’s belly. The priest, sent down hurriedly in the midst of dinner from the lord’s hall, dabbed his finger in the blood and touched it to a kerchief, then cut with silver scissors a lock of the newborn’s wet dark hair, which he folded in the same kerchief. With that as proof, no fond foolish peasant girl could hide the child away from his true father. The stupid slut might try that; some of them did, being so afraid of the lord’s magic, although anyone with wit enough to dip stew from a kettle ought to realize that the lords meant no harm to these outbred children. Quite the contrary. With a final sniff, the priest sketched a gesture that left a streak of light in the room long after he’d left, and departed, to report the successful birth. Not a monster, a manchild whole of limb and healthy. Perhaps this one would inherit the birthright magic . . . perhaps.

Behind, in the birthing room, the midwife glowered at the glowing patch of air, and sketched her own gesture, tossing a handful of herbs at it. It hung there still, hardly fading. The new mother grunted, and the midwife returned to her work, ignoring the light she was determined not to need. She had the healing hands, a legacy of a great-grandmother’s indiscretion in the days when such indiscretions meant a quick marriage to some handy serf. She hardly believed the change, and having a priest of Esea in the birthing room convinced her only that the high lords had no decency.

In the lord’s hall, the infant’s future was quickly determined. His mother could be his nurse, but his rearing would be that of a young lord, until his ability or lack of it appeared.

The boy showed a quick intelligence, a lively curiosity; he learned easily and could form the elegant script of Old Aare by the time he had seen six midwinter festivals. He had no peasant accent; he had no lack of manners or bodily grace. He also had no magic, and when the lord lost hope that he might show a useful trace of it, he found the boy a foster family in one of his villages, and sent him away.

It could have been worse. His lord provided: the family prospered, and the youth, as he grew to be, had no trouble finding a wife. He would inherit a farmstead, he was told, and in due time he had his own farm. With his father’s gifts, he started well above the average, and as well he had the position of a market judge in the nearest town. It was not enough to live on, but it supplemented his farm’s production. He knew he was well off, and shrugged away the hopes he’d once had of being adopted into the lord’s family. Yet he could not forget his parentage, or the promise of magic.

In the year of his birth, and far away, the boy already lived who would make his parentage worthless.

Chapter One

“You’re big enough now,” said the boy’s mother. “You don’t need to be hanging on my skirts any more. You’re bold enough when it’s something you want to do.” As she spoke, she raked at the boy’s thick unruly hair with her fingers, and wiped a smudge of soot from his cheek. “You take that basket to the lord’s steward, now, and be quick about it. Are you a big boy, or only a baby, then?”

“I’m big,” he said, frowning. “I’m not scared.” His mother flicked her apron over his shirt again, and landed a hand on his backside.

“Then get on with you. You’re to be home right away, Gird, mind that. No playing about with the other lads and lasses. There’s work to be done, boy.”

“I know.” With a grunt, he lifted the basket, almost hip-high, and leaned sideways to balance the weight; it was piled high with plums, the best from their tree. He could almost taste one, the sweet juice running down his throat . . . .

“And don’t you be eating any of those, Gird. Not even one. Your Da would skin you for it.”

“I won’t.” He started up the lane, walking cantways from the weight, but determined not to put the basket down for a rest until he was out of sight of the house. He wanted to go alone. He’d begged for the chance, last year, when he was clearly too small. And this year, when she’d first told him, he’d—he frowned harder, until he could feel the knot of his brows. He’d been afraid, after all. “I’m not afraid,” he muttered to himself. “I’m not. I’m big, bigger than the others.”

All along the lanes he saw others walking, carrying baskets slung over an arm or on a back. A handbasket for each square of bramble-berries; an armbasket for each tree in its first three years of bearing; a ruckbasket for each smallfruit tree over three years, and a back-basket for apples in prime. Last year he’d carried a handbasket in each hand: two handbaskets make an armbasket, last year’s fee. This year was the plum’s fourth bearing year, and now they owed the lord a ruckbasket.

And that leaves us, he thought bitterly, with only an armbasket for ourselves. It had been a dry year; most of the fruit fell before it ripened. He had heard his parents discussing it. They could have asked the lord’s steward to change their fee, but that might bring other trouble.

“It’s not the name I want, a man who argues every measure of his fee,” said his father, leaning heavily on the table. “No. It’s better to pay high one year, and have the lord’s opinion. ’Tis not as if we were hungry.”

Gird had listened silently. They had been hungry, two years before; he still remembered the pain in his belly, and his brother’s gifts of food. Anything was better than that. Now, as he walked the lane, his belly grumbled; the smell of the plums seemed to go straight from his nose to his gut. He squinted against the bright light, trying not to think of it. Underfoot the dust was hot on the surface, but his feet sank into a coolness—was it damp? Why did wet and cold feel the same? He saw a puddle left from the rain a week ago, and headed for it before remembering his mother’s detailed warnings. No puddles, she’d said; you don’t come into the lord’s court with dirty feet.

The lane past his father’s house curved around a clump of pick-oak and into the village proper. Gird shifted his basket to the other side, and stumped on. Up ahead, just beyond the great stone barn where the whole village stored hay and grain was the corner of the lord’s wall. The lane was choked with people waiting to go in the gate, children younger than Gird with handbaskets, those his own age with armbaskets, older ones with ruckbaskets like his. He joined the line, edging forward as those who had paid their fee came out and left room within.

Once inside the gate, he could just see over taller heads one corner of the awning over the steward’s table. As he tried to peek between those ahead of him, and see more, someone tapped his head with a hard knuckle. He looked around.

“Good looking plums,” said Rauf, Oreg the pigherd’s son. “Better than ours.” Rauf was a hand taller than Gird, and mean besides. Gird nodded, but said nothing. That was safer with Rauf. “They’d look better in my basket, I think. Eh, Sig?” Rauf nudged his friend Sikan in the ribs, and they both grinned at Gird. “You’ve more than you need, little boy; that basket’s too heavy anyway,” Rauf took a handful of plums off the top of the basket, and Sikan did the same.

“You stop!” Gird forgot that loud voices were not allowed in the lord’s court. “Those are my plums!”

“They may have been once, but I found them.” Rauf shoved Gird hard; he stumbled, and more plums rolled out of the basket. “Found them all over the ground, I did; what’s down is anyone’s, right?”

Gird tried to snatch for the rolling plums. Sikan kicked him lightly in the arm, while Rauf tipped his basket all the way over. Gird heard some of the other boys laughing, a woman nearby crying shame to them all. The back of his neck felt hot, and he heard a wind in his ears. Before he thought, he grabbed the basket and slammed it into Rauf’s face. Sikan jumped at him; Gird rolled away, kicking wildly. In moments that corner of the courtyard was a wild tangle of fighting boys and squashed fruit. The steward bellowed, the lord’s guards waded into the fight, using their hands, their short staves, the flats of their swords. And Gird found himself held immobile by two guards, with Rauf lying limp on the stones, and the other boys huddled in a frightened mass behind a line of armed men.

“Disgraceful,” said someone over his head. Gird looked up. The lord’s steward, narrow-faced, blue-eyed. “Who started it?”

No one answered. Gird felt the hands tighten on his arms, and give a shake. “Boy,” said a deeper voice, one of the men holding him. “What do you know about this? Who started it?”

“He stole my plums.” Before he spoke, he didn’t realize he was going to. In the heavy silence, with Rauf lying still before him, and the courtyard a mess of trampled fruit, his voice sounded thin. The steward looked at him, met his eyes.

“Your name, boy? Your father?”

“Gird, sir. Dorthan’s son.”

“Dorthan, eh? Your father’s not a brawling man; I’d have thought better of his sons.”

“Sir, he stole my plums!”

“Your tribute . . . yes. What was it, this year?”

“A ruckbasket, sir. And they were fine plums, big dark ones, and he—”

“Who?”

Gird nodded at Rauf. “Rauf, sir. Him and Sikan, his friend.”

“Anyone else see that?” The steward’s gaze drifted over the crowd of boys. Most stared at their feet, but Teris, a year older than Gird and son of his nearest neighbor, nodded.

“If you please, sir, it was Rauf started it. He said they were good plums, and would look better in his basket. Then he took some, and Gird said no, and he knocked Gird aside—”

“Rauf struck the first blow?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Anyone else?” Reluctant nods followed this. Gird saw a space open around Sikan, who had edged to the rear of the group. Sikan flushed and moved forward when the steward stared hard at him.

“It wasn’t so bad, sir,” he said, trying to smile around a bruised lip. “We was just teasing the lad, like, that was all.”

“Teasing, in your lord’s court?”

“Well—”

“And did you hit this boy?” The steward pointed at Gird.

“Well, sir, I may have—sort of—sort of pushed at him, like, but nothing hard, not to say brawling. But he’s one of them, you know, likes to make quarrels—”

The steward frowned. “It’s not the first time, Sikan, that you and Rauf have been found in bad order.” He nodded at the men behind Gird, and they released his arms. Gird rubbed his left elbow. “As for you, Gird son of Dorthan, brawling in the lord’s court is always wrong—always. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.” There was nothing else to say.

“And you’re at fault in saying that your plums were stolen. They were your lord’s plums, owed to him. If Rauf had given them in, the lord would still have them. Instead—” The steward waved his hand at the mess. Very few whole fruit had survived the brawl. “But your family has a good name, young Gird, and I think you did not mean to cause trouble. So there will be no fine in fruit for your family . . . only you, along with these others, will stay and clean the court until those stones are clean enough to satisfy Sergeant Mager here.”

“Yes, sir.” And he would be late home, and get another whipping from his father.

“Now as for you, Sikan, and Rauf—” For Rauf had begun to move about, and his eyes opened, though aimlessly as yet. “Since you started trouble, and moreover chose a smaller boy to bully, you’ll spend a night in the stocks, when this work is done.” And the steward turned away, back to his canopy over the account table where the scribes made marks on long rolls of parchment.

Gird found the rest of that day instructive. He had scrubbed their stone floor often enough at home, and scraped dung from the cowshed. But his mother was no more particular about the bowls they ate from than Sergeant Mager about the courtyard stones. He and the other boys picked up pieces of the squashed fruit and put them in baskets—without getting even a taste of it. Then they carried buckets of water—buckets so large that Gird couldn’t carry one by himself—and brushed the stones with water and long-handled brushes. Then they rinsed, and then they scrubbed again. Just when Gird was sure that the stones could be no cleaner had they just been quarried, the Sergeant would find a scrap of fruit rind, and they had it all to do over again. But he did his best, working as hard as he could. By the time the Sergeant let them go, it was well past midday, and Gird’s fingers were raw with scrubbing. He called Gird back from the gate for an extra word.

“Your dad’s got a good name,” he said, laying a heavy hand on Gird’s shoulder. “And you’re a good lad, if quick-tempered. You’ve got courage, too—you were willing to take on those bigger lads. Ever think of being a soldier?”

Gird felt his heart leap. “You mean . . . like you?”

The sergeant laughed. “Not at first, of course. You’d start like the others, as a recruit. But you’re big for your age, and strong. You work hard. Think of it . . . a sword, a spear maybe . . . you could make sergeant someday.”

“Do you ever get to ride a horse?” That was his dream, to ride a fast horse as the lords did, running before the wind.

“Sometimes.” The sergeant smiled. “The steward might recommend you for training. A lad like you needs the discipline, needs a place to work off his extra energy. Besides, it’s a mouth less to feed at home.” He gave Gird’s shoulder a final shake, and pushed him out the gate. “We’ll have a word with your dad, this next day or so. Don’t start trouble again, eh?”

“Holy Lady of Flowers!” His mother had been half-way down the lane; she must have been watching from the house. “Gird, what did you mean—”

“I’m sorry.” He stared at the dust between his toes, aware of every rip in his clothes. They had been his best, the shirt actually new, and now they looked like his ragged old ones. “I didn’t start it, Mother, truly I didn’t. Rauf stole some plums, and I thought we might have a fine—”

“Effa says Rauf hit you first.”

“Yes’m.” He heard her sigh, and looked up. “I really didn’t—”

“Gird—” She put a hand on his head. “At least you’re back, and no fine. Effa says the steward didn’t seem angry, not like she thought he would be.”

“I don’t think he is.” Suddenly his news burst out of him. “Guess what the sergeant said—maybe I can train to be a soldier! I could have a sword—” Excited as he was, he didn’t notice her withdrawal, the shock on her face. “Sometimes they even ride horses, he said. He said I was big enough, and strong, and—” Her stiff silence held him at last; he stared at her. “Mother?”

“No!” She caught his arm, and half-dragged him down the lane to the house.

The argument went on all evening. His father’s first reaction to the story of the plums was to reach for his belt. “I don’t brawl,” he said. “And I didn’t raise my sons to be brawlers.”

Arin, as usual, stood up for him. “Da, that Rauf’s a bad lot, you know that. So’s the steward: they’ve got him in stocks this night, and Sikan too.”

“And I’ll have their fathers down on me, did you think of that? Oreg’s no man to blame his own son, even if Rauf tells the tale aright. If Gird hadn’t fought back, Oreg would’ve known he owed me sommat, a bit of bacon even. And Sikan’s father—I want no quarrel with him; his wife has the only parrion for dyecraft in this village. As for this way—it’s no good. We can’t be fighting each other; the world’s hard enough without that. They’ll have to know I punished Gird, and I’ll have to go to them and apologize.”

So it was a whipping on top of his bruises, and no supper as well as no lunch. Gird had expected as much; he saw from Arin’s wink that he would have a scrap to eat later, whatever Arin could sneak to him without being caught. But his father was as unhappy as his mother to hear of the sergeant’s offer of training.

“It’s never good to come into notice like that. Besides, we follow the Lady: would you take sword against your own folk, Gird? Break the village peace in blood and iron?” But before he could decide whether it was safe to answer—the answer he’d thought of, while waiting for his father to come from the fields—his father shrugged. “But if the steward comes, what can I say? They have the right to take you, no matter what I think about it. The best I can hope for is that the steward forgets it.”

The steward did not forget. Gird spent the next day wrestling with the family’s smallest scythe—still too long for him—mowing his father’s section of the meadow. He knew he’d been sent there to get him out of sight, away from the other village boys. He knew his mother had baked two sweet cakes for Rauf’s family and Sikan’s, and his father had taken them over in the early morning. It was hot, the steamy heat of full summer, and the cold porridge of his breakfast had not filled the hollows from yesterday’s fast. But above him, in the great field, his father was working, able to see if he shirked.

He kept at it doggedly, hacking uneven chunks where his brother could lay a clean swathe. There had to be a way. He paused to rub the great curved blade with the bit of stone his father had given him, and listened to the change in sound it made on different parts of the blade. When he looked sideways up the slope to the arable, he saw his father talking to another of the village men. Gird leaned on the scythe handle, the blade angled high above him, and picked a bur from between his toes.

When he looked again, his father had started back up the arable. Gird dared not move out of the sun to rest, but he tipped his head back to get the breeze. Something rustled in the tall grass ahead of him. Rat? Bird? He scratched the back of one leg with the other foot, glanced upslope again, and sighed. Someday he would be a man, and if he wasn’t a soldier, he’d be a farmer, and able to swing a bigger scythe than this one. Like his father, whose sweeping strokes led the reapers each year. Like his brother Arin, who had just grown out of this scythe. He grunted at himself, and let the long blade down. Surely he could find a way to make this work better.

By nightfall, with all his blisters, he had begun to mow a level swathe. He’d changed the handles slightly, learned to get his hip into the swing, learned to take steps just the right length to compensate for the blade’s arc. The next day, he spent on the same patch of meadow. Now that he had the knack of it, he was half-hoping the steward would not come. He would grow up a farmer like his father, leading the reapers in the field, guiding his own oxen, growing even better fruit. . .

It was the next day that the steward came at dusk, when his father had come in from the fields, and Gird had begun to feel himself out of disgrace as far as the family went. The children were sent to the barton out back, while the steward talked, and his father (he was sure) listened. He wanted to creep into the cowbyre and hear for himself, but Arin barred the way. He had to wait until his father called him in.

There in the candlelight, his father’s face looked older, tireder. His mother sat stiffly, lips pressed together, behind her loom. The steward smiled at him. “Gird, the sergeant suggested that you were a likely lad to train for soldier: strong and brave, and in need of discipline. Your father will let you choose for yourself. If you agree, you will spend one day of ten with the soldiers this year, and from Midwinter to Midwinter next, two days of ten. It’s not soldiering at first, I’ll be honest with you: you’ll work in the barracks just as you’d work here. But your father’d be paid the worth of your work, a copper crab more than for fieldwork. And the following year, you’d be a recruit, learning warcraft, and your father will get both coppers and a dole off his fee. ’Twould help your family, in hard times, but your father says you must do as you wish.”

It was frightening to see his parents so still, so clearly frightened themselves. He had never really understood them before, he felt. Behind him, in the doorway, Arin and the others crowded; he could hear their noisy breathing. Could soldiering be so bad as they thought? All his life he’d seen the guardsmen strolling the village lane, admired the glitter of their buckles, the jingle of their harness. He’d been too young to fear the ordersticks, the clubs . . . he’d had strong hands rumpling his hair, when he crowded near with the other boys, he’d had a smile from the sergeant himself. And the soldiers fought off brigands, and hunted wolves and folokai; he remembered only last winter, cheering in the snow with the others as they carried back the dead folokai tied to poles. One of them had been hurt, his blood staining the orange tunic he wore, but the world was hard, and there were many ways to be hurt.

He wanted to stand on one leg and think about it, but there stood the steward, peering at him in the dimness with eyes that seemed to see clear into his heart. He’d never spoken to a lord before, exactly. Was the steward a lord? Close enough.

“It would not be a binding oath,” the steward said, a little impatiently. Gird knew that tone; his father had it when he asked who had left the barton wicket open. It meant a quick answer, or trouble. “If you did not like it, you could quit before you started the real training . . .”

Gird ducked his head, and then looked up at the steward. From one corner of his vision he could see his father’s rigid face, but he ignored it.

“Sir . . . steward . . . I would be glad to. If my father allows.”

“He has said it.” The steward smiled, then. “Dorthan, your son Gird is accepted into service of the Count Kelaive, and here is the pirik—” The bargain-sum, Gird remembered: not a price paid, as if he were a sheep, but a sum to mark the conclusion of any bargain. The price was somewhat else.

The very next morning, Gird left at dawn to walk through the village to the count’s guards’ barracks. None of his friends were out to watch him, but he knew they would be impressed. The guard at the gate admitted him, sent him straight across the forecourt to the barracks. The guards were just getting up, and the sergeant was crosser than Gird remembered.

“Get in the kitchen first, and serve the food; then you can clean for the cooks until after morning drill. I’ll see you then. Hop, now.”

The porridge was much like their own, if cooked in larger pots and served in bigger bowls. Gird carried the dirty bowls back, and scrubbed them, under the cook’s critical eye, then scrubbed the big cookpots. Then it was chop the onions, while his eyes burned and watered, and chop the redroots until his hands were cramped, and then fetch buckets of clean water. All the while the cook scolded, worse than his oldest sister, while mixing and kneading the dough that would be dumplings in the midday stew. The sergeant came in while Gird was still washing down the long tables.

“Right, lad. Now let’s see what we’ve got, here. Come along.” He led Gird out the side door of the kitchen, into a back court, a little walled enclosure like a barton with no byres. In one corner was the kitchen well, with the row of buckets Gird had scrubbed neatly ranged along the wall.

The sergeant was just as impressive as ever, to Gird’s eye: taller and broader than his own father, hard-muscled, with a brisk authority that expected absolute obedience. Gird looked at him, imagining himself grown into that size and strength, wearing those clean, whole, unmended clothes, having a place in the village and in his lord’s service more secure than any farmer.

“You’re a hard worker, and strong,” the sergeant began, “but you’ll have to be stronger yet, and you’ll have to learn discipline. Begin with this: you don’t talk unless you’re told to, and you answer with ‘sir’ any time I speak to you. Clear?”

Gird nodded. “Yes . . . sir?”

“Right. You’re here to learn, not to chatter. Dawn to dusk, one day of ten . . . can you count?”

“Not really, sir.”

“Not really is no. Can’t count sheep, or cows?”

Gird frowned. “If they’re there . . . but not days, sir, they don’t stay in front of me.”

“You’ll learn. Now, Gird: when you come here, you must be clean and ready to work. If you can’t wash at home, come early and wash here. I’ll have no ragtags in my barracks. Is that your only shirt?”

“No, sir, but th’other’s worse.”

“Then you’ll get one, but only for this work. Do you have shoes? Boots?”

Gird shook his head, then remembered to say “No, sir.” Shoes? For a mere lad? He had never had shoes, and wouldn’t until he wed, unless his father had a string of good years.

“You’ll need them later; you can wear them here, but not at home. Did you have breakfast at home this morning?” Of course he had not, beyond a bit of crust; the porridge had just gone on when he walked up to the barracks. The sergeant hmmphed at that. “Can’t grow soldiers on thin rations. I’ll tell the cook, and you’ll eat here all day on your workdays. Now—about the other boys. I want no brawling, young Gird, none at all. If they tease you about going for soldier, you learn to let it pass. No threats from you, no catcalling at Rauf or Satik or whatever his name was. You’ll be where they can’t bother you, if you keep your nose clean. Hothead soldiers cause more trouble than they’re worth; you have your chance, for you and your family: earn it.”

An answer seemed required; Gird said “Yes, sir.”

The rest of that day was more chores and little that Gird could see as soldiering, although he did see the inside of the barracks, with the lines of wooden bunks and thin straw mattresses, the weapons hung neatly on the walls, the jacks (inside! He wondered, but did not ask, how they were cleaned. Surely they were cleaned; they smelled less than his own family’s pit.) He swept a floor that seemed clean enough already, carried more buckets of water to the cook, ate a bowl of stew larger than his father ever saw for his lunch, washed dishes until his hands wrinkled afterwards, fetched yet more water,(he felt his feet had worn a groove from the well to the kitchen door) and sliced yet more redroots, had a huge slab of bread and a piece of meat for supper, and was allowed to stand silent in a corner and watch the ordered marching that preceded the changing of watch before dusk.

He ran home along the dark lane his bare feet knew so well, bursting with excitement. Meat! He didn’t know if he would tell them, because they would see no meat until harvest . . . but it had tasted so good, and the stew and bread had filled all the hollows in his belly. He burped, tasting meat on his breath, and laughed.

They were waiting, and had saved a bowl of gruel and hunk of bread for him; he felt both shamed and proud when he could give it to the others.

“So—they’ll feed you well?” His mother wasn’t quite looking at him, spooning his share carefully into other bowls.

“Yes. Breakfast too, but I must get there early.”

“And do you like soldiering?” she asked, a sharpness in her voice.

“It’s not soldiering yet,” he said, watching the others eat. “I helped the cook today, chopping onions and carrying water . . . I carried enough water for two days.”

“You can carry my water tomorrow,” his mother said. His father had yet said nothing, watching Gird across the firelight as he ate.

The time from summer to Midwinter passed quickly. One day in ten he rose before dawn, at first cockcrow, and ran up the lane to the gate where the guards now knew him by name and greeted him. Into that steamy kitchen, larger than his own cottage, where the cook—never so difficult as that first day—gave him a great bowl of porridge before he served the others. As the days drew in with autumn, that kitchen became a haven, rich with the smells of baking bread and roasting meat, savory stews, fruit pies. It was a feast-day, however plain the soldiers found the food (and he was amazed to hear them grumble), he had his belly full from daylight to dark. With a full belly, the work went easily. Hauling water, sweeping, washing, chopping vegetables, chopping wood for the great hearths. He learned the names of all the guards, and knew where everything was kept. Two of them were recruits, one from his village and one from over the fields sunrising, tall boys he would have thought men if he hadn’t seen them next to the soldiers. He began to learn the drill commands as he watched.

The other nine days passed as his days always had, in work with his family. He was growing into the scythe, or managing it better, and he was allowed in the big field for the first time. Arin took him up to the high end of the wood, where the village pigs spent the summer rooting and wallowing, to help gather them into the lower pens. They ate their meager lunch in a rocky cleft up higher than others ever came, a place Arin had shown him the first year he went to help gather pigs. He spent a few days nutting in the woods, with his friends, laughing and playing tricks like the others. They all wanted to know what he was learning. When he explained that so far it was just work, like any work, they wondered why he agreed.

“It will be soldiering,” Gird said, leaning back against a bank and squinting up at one of their favorite nut trees. “And in the meantime, it’s food and coppers for my family—what better?”

“Good food?” asked Amis. He was lean and ribby, as they all were that year.

Gird nodded. “Lots of it, too. And that leaves more—”

“Can you take any home?”

“No.” That had been a disappointment, and his first disgrace. Sharing food was part of his life: everyone shared, fast or feast. But when he tried to take home a half-loaf being tossed out anyway, it had brought swift punishment. “The sergeant says that’s stealing. They’re getting enough for me, he says, more than I’m worth. That may be so, though I try. But not one crust will they let me take out, or a single dried plum.” The stripes had not hurt as much as knowing he could not share; he had not told his father why he’d been punished.

Terris made the closed-fist gesture against evil. “Gripe-hearts, is what they are. You watch, Gird, they’ll turn you against us.”

“Never.” Gird said it loudly, though he could already sense a rift between him and his friends. “I can share from my own, when I earn my own: then you’ll see. Open heart, open hands: the Lady’s blessing.”

“Lady’s blessing,” they all said. Gird made sure to put a handful more than his share into the common sack, that would go up to the count’s steward as their fee for nutting in those woods.

At Midwinter Feast, he stood once more before the steward, this time in the Hall, and agreed to his next year’s service. His father had stayed home, shrugging away Gird’s concern for his cough. Two days in ten, he thought, they will not have to feed me, and there’s the coppers besides. He was proud of the thought that his pay might help with the field-fee.

Two days in ten made one in five. In the short days of winter, the sergeant set him to learning counting and letters. Gird hated it. Sitting with cold feet and numbed hands over a board scrawled with mysterious shapes was far harder than fetching water from the well, even when that meant breaking the ice on it first. At home he could read tallies well enough, the notched sticks all the farmers used to keep count of stock and coin. But here were no helpful hints . . . you could not tell, from the words, who wrote them. Without the clue that this tally was Oder’s . . . when everyone knew that Oder had only a double-hand of sheep . . . you had to know all the words and numbers to find out what it said.

Some of the men laughed unkindly at his struggles. “Thickhead,” said one, a balding redhead whom Gird had rather liked before. “Perhaps the knowledge could get in, if we cracked it open for you?”

“More like his little wit would fall out,” said another. “He thinks with his hands and feet, that one, like most peasants.”

Gird tried to concentrate on markings that seemed to jump and jiggle about in the flickering candlelight. Was the sign for three supposed to stick out this way, or that? He wiggled his fingers, trying to remember. The sergeant’s sword was on the same side as that hand . . . he shook his head, confused once more.

“Here,” said the redhead, handing him two pebbles. “Put this in your hand—no, that hand—and hold it there. Now call that your left hand, eh? Stonehand. Some signs are stonehand, some are empty hand—you can remember that much, can’t you?”

He might have, but he was angry. He clenched his teeth against the temptation. The sergeant intervened. “Let him alone, Slagin. The stone’s a good idea, but leave the rest of it. Some boys take longer, that’s all. All right, Gird, the cook needs more water.”

By spring, the two days in ten of plentiful food had begun to show. He had always been heavier built than most of his sibs. “More like my brother,” his father had said, of an uncle dead before he was born. Now his broader frame began to carry thicker muscle. He had grown another two fingers up, and was straining the seams of his shirt. And that summer he carried a ruckbasket of plums without difficulty.

All that year, Gird worked his two days in ten, and his family settled into the knowledge that he would almost certainly become a soldier. His father continued to teach him the crafts and skills of farming, but with less urgency. His mother let out his old shirt, and made a new one, without pleading with him to stay home. His brothers admitted, privately, that life was a bit easier when he got part of his food elsewhere, and the coppers came in on quarterdays. Rauf tried once to tease him into a fight, calling him coward when he backed off; a few months later he noticed that Rauf crossed the lane to avoid him. And his friends seemed glad to see him, when any of them had time off for foolery, which wasn’t often.

So at Midwinter, he gave his oath to the steward, and entered training as a recruit, to sleep in the barracks with the others and learn the arts of war.

Chapter Two

“Your oath to the steward’s one thing,” said Sergeant Mager. “It’s me you’ve got to satisfy.”

Gird, along with three other recruits, all from other villages, stood uneasily in his new orange uniform while the sergeant stalked back and forth in front of them. The other soldiers were inside, enjoying the Midwinter Feast. They were in the little back courtyard he knew so well, with an icy wind stiffening their skins.

“If you make it through training,” the sergeant went on, “you’ll give your oath to our lord or his guardian. You’ll go where he sends you, and fight his battles, the rest of your time as soldier. Some of you—” He did not look at Gird. “—some of you started your training as boys. But you needn’t think you know much yet. You all start level.”

Level meant the bottom. The senior recruits, that Gird had seen cuffed and bullied by the older men, now cuffed and bullied the new ones. Gird was no longer the cook’s helper, but he still hauled buckets of water, scrubbed floors, and now had his uniform to keep clean and mended, besides. The boots that went with it kept his feet from the snow, but chafed badly until he learned how to pack them with oily wool. He had never had to do anything to a bed but fall into it and fight his brothers for the cover: now he had to produce as neat a mattress, as tightly rolled a blanket, as the others. And, lacking a boy to do the work, all four new recruits washed dishes.

Yet none of them complained. Like Gird, they had all been peasants’ sons, only one of them the son of a free tenant. It was worth all the abuse to have a full belly all winter long, somewhere warm to sleep. Gradually they got used to having enough to eat, a bunk each, with a warm blanket, whole clothes that fit, boots.

Gird had been hoping to move quickly into training with weapons, but the sergeant had other priorities. They would all, he said firmly, with a hard look at Gird, learn their letters well enough to follow simple orders. They would learn to keep count, so they could help the steward or his agents during tax-time. Ifor, who had been sent from the nearest trading town, could already read a little, and use the pebble-board for figuring. He didn’t mind the daily session with letters that was still torture to Gird.

“You’ll never make sergeant, Gird, if you don’t learn this,” the sergeant warned. Gird was beginning to think he didn’t care, if making sergeant meant making sense of reading and writing and numbers. He could see, as clear as his hand on the table, how many legs two sheep had, but trying to think of it and write it down made the sweat run down his face. He was the slowest in this, as he was strongest in body. The sergeant insisted that it didn’t have to work that way, that many strong men were quick-minded in learning to read. Gird eyed the others wistfully, wondering what the difference was inside their heads. He struggled on. He knew all the marks, now, that stood for numbers and sounds; he could read the simplest words, and write his own name in awkward, shaky letters. But it got no easier, for all his labors.

Besides that, they had to learn about their lord’s domain: the correct address for the lord himself, for the steward, for the various officers who came through on inspections. The names of all the villages, and the headmen of each, and the sergeants in all the places the guard was stationed. Once in the lord’s guard, they might be sent anywhere within his domain. Most men served away from their homes, at least until they were well along in service. Gird had never really considered the possibility that he might leave and never come back. Going off to war was one thing, but leaving this village—the only place he’d ever known—to make a life somewhere else—that was new and disturbing. He frowned, but said nothing. At least this was better than reading and writing. The lists went on and on. They had to know the right name for each piece of equipment in the barracks, from the tools used on the hearth to the weapons hung on the walls. Each weapon had not only a name, but a name for each part—for each movement with which it could be used—for the command given to make each movement.

When they did begin what Gird recognized as soldier’s training, it was hardly different from the games boys played. Wrestling—he had wrestled with the other lads all his life. He was good at it. When the sergeant asked him if he thought he knew how, he answered briskly that he did, and stepped out. Someone chuckled, but he ignored it. They laughed at everything the new recruits did, good or bad. He eyed the balding redhead he’d been told to work with, and cocked his arm, edging in as the boys always did. Something like a tree trunk suddenly grabbed him and he felt himself flying through the air, to land hard on the cold stone floor.

“It’s not a game, any more,” said his partner mildly. “Try again.” Some five falls later, when Gird was breathless, bruised, and much less cocky—and the other man had hardly broken into a sweat—the sergeant called a halt.

“Now you know what you don’t know. Convinced?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember: if we have to crack your head to let in wisdom, we will.” The sergeant was serious, but Gird grinned at that. It made sense. His father said much the same, and he’d known all his life that his own head was considered harder than most.

Besides wrestling, there was drill. Gird found he liked that, although he had trouble with some of the sequences, and more than once turned in the wrong place and got trodden on. And pounded, when the sergeant caught up with him. But when it worked, when all the separate individuals merged into one body, and the boots crashed on the stones together, it sent shivers down his backbone. This was really soldiering, something the village folk could watch and recognize, something to show off. If the sergeant ever let them past the gates, which he had not for tens and tens of days.

One late winter day, shepherds came to ask the guard’s help in hunting a pack of wolves. The steward agreed, and the sergeant, now mounted on a stout brown horse, led them all out into a miserably cold, bleak day with neither sun nor snow to commend it. Gird marched for the first time in uniform down the lane past his cottage, where his younger sister peeked through the leafless hedge and dared a shy wave. He could not wave back, not with the sergeant’s eye on him, as it surely was, for all he rode ahead. But he knew she watched, and admired her older brother, and someday all the others would too. He could imagine himself receiving admiring glances from all the villagers, when he saved their stock from wolves or folokai, or protected them from brigands.

Gird enjoyed the wolf hunt, though it meant that he and the other inexperienced ones spent three whole days trudging through cold damp woods and across even colder wet pastures, looking for wolf signs. It was not until much later that he realized the sergeant never expected them to find any—that’s what the gnarled old tracker with his hounds was for—but it kept them out of trouble and far away from the actual hunt. They returned in the glow of a successful hunt, behind the lucky ones who had actually killed two wolves and so got to carry them through the village (Gird and the other recruits had carried them most of the way back, while the hunters themselves told and retold exactly how each spear had gone into its prey.)

With the coming of spring, they spent more of their time outside, and more of it in things Gird recognized as soldierly. Marching drill, and long marches across the fields and pastures. Archery, not with the simple and fairly weak bows his own people used for hunting small fowl in the woods, but with the recurved bows that took all his strength to draw. They learned the use of stick and club, facing off in pairs and later with the older recruits in sections. Gird collected his fair share of bruises and scrapes without comment, and dealt as many.

Days lengthened with the turning year. Soldiers as well as farmers had to put in their due of roadwork, and Gird’s weapon on that occasion was a shovel. He hesitated before jamming it into the clogged ditch: was this like a plow? Did he need to perform the spring ritual of propitiation before putting iron in Alyanya’s soil? He muttered a quick apology as he saw the sergeant glare his way. It would have to do. He meant no disrespect, and he had brought (on his own time) the sunturning flowers to the barracks well. Although the sergeant had brushed them away without comment, surely the Lady would understand.

He might have known his mutter would not go unnoticed. Even as he tossed the second shovelful of wet clay and matted leaves to one side, the sergeant was beside him.

“What’s that you said, Gird?”

“Just asked the Lady’s peace, sir, before putting iron to ’er.”

The sergeant sighed, gustily, and looked both ways to be sure the others were hard at work before he spoke. “Gird, when you were a farmer’s brat, you paid attention to the Lady, and no doubt to every well-sprite, spring spirit, and endstone watcher. I’ve no doubt who it was tied that bunch of weeds to the wellpost.”

Gird opened his mouth to say it wasn’t weeds at all, but the proper flowers, picked fresh that morning, but thought better of it.

“But now you’re a soldier, or like to be. You need a soldier’s patron now, Gird, not a farmer’s harvest matron. Gods know I’m as glad of the Lady’s bounty as anyone, and I grant her all praise in harvest time. It’s right for farmers to follow all the rituals. But not you. Will you stop to ask the Lady’s blessing every time you draw steel, in the midst of battle? You’ll have a short life that way.”

“But sir—”

“You cannot be both, Gird, farmer and soldier. Not in your heart. Did your folk teach you nothing of soldiers’ gods?” Gird shook his head, still shoveling, and the sergeant sighed again. “Well, ’tis time you learned. Tir will take your oath in iron, same as mine, and asks nothing but your courage in battle and your care for your comrades. The lords say he’s below Esea, their god—” He peered at Gird’s face, to see if he understood. Gird nodded, silently; his father had had a lot to say about Esea—a foreign god, he’d said, not like their own Lady, and not like the Windsteed. “But to us it doesn’t matter,” said the sergeant. “He’s god enough for me, my lad, and that should be enough for you. Think about it. And no more flowers around my well, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.” He had not thought soldiers that different. Everyone knew the capriciousness of the merin, the well-sprites . . . how the water rose and fell, regardless of local rains, how even its flavor changed. Had that well in the barracks yard gone years without proper care? He was sure the water had tasted sweeter after his offering. But he could not argue with his sergeant.

After the roadwork, after the bridge repairs that followed the spring rains, the recruits had their first chance to mingle with the villagers. Gird spent most of that time helping his father and brothers with their work, but found an hour now and then to meet with his old friends. At first they were properly impressed with his growing strength and martial skills, but that didn’t last long.

“It’s not fair,” said Teris, when Gird had thrown him easily for the third time one evening. “You’re using soldier’s tricks against friends, and that’s not fair.” He turned away. So did the others.

“But I—” Gird stared at their backs. He knew what that meant. If they shut him out, he would have no one in the village but his family. And his family, just lately, had been irritating him with complaints about his attitude. If the sergeant forbade him to remember all the Lady’s rituals, his family insisted that he perform them all perfectly. He could not lose his friends: not now. “I—I will teach you,” he offered. “Then it would be fair.”

“Would you, truly?” Teris turned around again.

“Of course.” Gird took a deep breath. The sergeant might think he knew nothing—or that’s what he kept saying—but here he knew more than any of them. “We can say we have a guard unit—we can have a sergeant, a captain—”

“I suppose you’ll want to be captain,” said Kev.

“If he’s teaching us,” said Teris, shrugging, “he can be captain. For awhile.”

“We need a level field,” said Gird. He would teach them marching, he thought to himself. Maybe if he taught them, he wouldn’t forget the commands himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered an oath not to teach “peasants and churls” the arts of war. But marching in step wasn’t an art of war. They’d all tried it when they were little boys; they just hadn’t known how to do it right. And wrestling wasn’t an art of war; no one fought battles by wrestling. And archery . . . all boys played with archery. Nonetheless, he took care that the level field they decided on was well out of sight of the guard stations.

In a few weeks, Gird’s troop of boys was moving around the back horse pasture with assurance. Bit by bit, as he learned from the sergeant, he transferred knowledge to the boys.

“The little groups are called squads,” he said one day. “We have enough to have three of them; it’s like pretend armies. Every squad has a leader, and marches together, and you can do real things with it.” They built a sod fort in the field, and practiced assaults. Teris, in particular, had a gift for it; he remembered everything Gird told him, the first time.

Now, rehearsing his new knowledge with his friends, Gird felt that his life as a soldier was well begun. That first summer as a recruit, he spent all his free time with them; he saw no reason why their old friendship should ever end. He wished he could show them off to the sergeant. If he could train them, he had to be learning himself, didn’t he?

But as time passed, Gird’s friends were working too hard in the fields to have time for boyish play. First one, then another, failed to turn up for drill, and then the others refused to do it. They wanted to lie in the long grass and talk about things Gird didn’t know: whose brother was courting whose sister, which family might have trouble raising the field-fee this year, all that timeless village gossip. When he tried to argue them into drill or wrestling, they simply looked at him, a look the sergeant had taught him to think mulish and stupid. He gave in, since arguing would not serve, and wished he could live in two places at once.

After harvest, he had less time off himself, and rarely came into the village all that winter. The recruits had begun to learn sword-work, and even Gird knew that he could make no excuse for teaching his friends to use edged weapons, even if they had had them to practice with. No one did; the strictest of the laws forbade any but soldiers to have weapons, and even the free smiths feared the punishment for breaking that law. Besides, the sergeant still insisted that he keep trying to learn to read and write. None of his friends could, or cared to. His father admitted that reading was a useful skill, but wasn’t at all sure that it was right for a farmer to know. Gird opened his mouth to say “But I’m not a farmer!” and shut it again. That was the whole point, and they all knew it.

There were other barriers growing, too, between them. He could not tell them what the sergeant said about Alyanya, or what he felt himself. Even the rituals of harvest had seemed a little silly; the twisted wisps of straw, the knotted yarn around the last sheaf, all that was peasant lore, far removed from his future as a soldier. He felt guilty when he listened to the other soldiers’ jests; those were his people, his family and extended kin. Yet he wished that the villagers would somehow impress the soldiers—would somehow be more soldierly, so that he could feel pride in them.

And there was the matter of soldiers’ discipline. For himself, Gird could stand a few buffets when he made a mistake, a few lashes for coming back drunk from the harvest festival trying to sing “Nutting in the Woods.” Being clouted by the others was no worse than being mauled by Rauf and the older boys when he’d been younger. For that matter, many families were almost as rough; his father had taken a belt to him more than once, and his oldest brother had pummeled him regularly before he married and moved away.

What he did not like was having to do the same to others. When Keri, a lad from one of the distant villages, mishandled a sword, and the sergeant had them all join in the punishment, Gird told himself that someone who couldn’t stand a few buffets wouldn’t stay strong in battle, but he didn’t like to think which bruise on that battered face had come from his fist. He got a reputation for being strong enough but unaggressive, a little too gentle. The sergeant shook his head at him after seeing him flinch from Keri’s punishment. “And I thought you’d be the quarrelsome sort, glad enough to clout others. Well, better this way, as long as you don’t mind killing an enemy. But mind, lad, soldiering’s not for the faint heart or weak stomach.” He was sure he would not mind a battle; it was having to hit someone helpless that made him feel sick to his stomach. This was another thing he could not share with boyhood friends; he knew they would not understand.

Past Midwinter Feast, in the slack of late winter, he found another troubling presence in the barracks. Three of the soldiers, all from Finyatha and rotated here from the count’s household, favored Liart. Gird had never heard of Liart before that second winter, when he came back from the jacks one night to find the three crouched before the hearth with something that whimpered between them. When they heard him, one of them whirled.

“Get away!” he’d said. “Or by Liart’s chain, you’ll rue it!” He had gone to the sergeant, unsure, and seen the sergeant’s face tighten.

“Liart, is it? Liart’s chain? I’ll give them Liart’s chain!” And he had stormed out, bellowing. But in the end he had gone to the steward, and come back shaken. “A god of war is a god of war,” he’d said then, in the bleak light of a winter morning. “Our lord approves, if someone chooses Liart for patron.”

Gird tried to ask, and was sworn at for his pains. Then, later, one of the other men, Kadir, explained. “Liart’s followers buy his aid with blood; ’tis said he likes it best if it comes hardly . . . d’you see?” Gird didn’t, but knew he didn’t want to know. “Liart’s chain . . . that’s the barbed chain, like the barbed whip they use on murderers, up in Finyatha. Some lords use it, more than used to. Mostly it was thieves and outlaws, in the old days, so I heard. But the thing is, Gird, don’t you be asking trouble of Liart’s followers; they’ll torment you as glad as anyone, if you bring notice to them. I’d be careful, was I you.”

A few days later he found a short length of barbed chain on his bunk, as they came in for inspection. The sergeant’s eyes met his; he took his punishment without complaint; they both knew he had not put it there. He himself had declared for Tir, as his sergeant had suggested the previous summer, although he had not yet given his oath of iron. That would require a Blademaster, and the sergeant said they would have the chance after they’d given their final oath to the lord when training was over. The sergeant had told him what was lawful for him to know, though, and it was very little like anything the villagers taught.

So when the days lengthened again into spring, there were many things he could not share with old friends. They would have questions he could not answer—that was the best face he could put on it. Likely it would be worse. And he himself, as tall now as any of the guards, would be promoted from recruit come Summereve, when the lord was home from Finyatha.

Later he would remember that spring as one of the happiest times of his life, drenched in honey. He was young and strong and handsome; when he walked along the lanes to visit his family, with the brass badge of his lord’s service shined and winking in the sun, the little children smiled and waved at him, tagging along behind. “Gird,” they called. “Strong Gird . . . carry me, please?” Girls near his age glanced at him sideways; he felt each glance like a caress. Boys too old to tag him like the younger children watched nonetheless, and when he stopped to speak to someone they’d come close. “Is it hard to be a soldier, Gird?” they’d ask. And sometimes he told them tales of the barracks, and watched their eyes widen.

Once, twice, he had leave to go to the gatherings in the sheep-folds around, where the young men and girls met and danced. He was too young yet—he merely watched—but he enjoyed the music, and the respectful, if wary, glances. His old friends still joked with him, cautiously, but none ventured to wrestle or match arms. He didn’t mind that; he didn’t want to hurt them, and he knew now that he could.

Even at home, it was a good spring. His father’s eyes still showed concern, but his older brothers were clearly proud to have a brother in the guards. Other lads his own age were still “lads” only—too young to marry, too young to inherit a farm, and most were younger sons. “Sim’s boys” or “Artin’s boys,” they were called, in lumps like cattle. But he, Gird son of Dorthan, he had a name for himself in the village, and a nickname to match, for even the veterans called him “Strong Gird.” And on his rare days off, when he helped his father and brothers on the farm, he knew he deserved that nickname: he could outlift any of them, could haul more wood and dig a longer line of ditch. Now he could handle the longest scythe they had, and mow as level a swathe as his father.

“I can’t say they’ve spoiled you for work,” his father said one of those nights, when Gird was enjoying a last few minutes by the fire before walking back to the barracks. “You’re a good worker; you always were, from a little lad. You’re strong, and you’ve no foolish ideas about it. But I still wish—” He left the wish unfinished. Gird knew what he would have said, but he had never understood it. He would never forget his family, the people of his heart. And, strong as he was, he wouldn’t die in battle far away—he would come home to them. Couldn’t they understand that?

“I’ll be all right, Da,” he said, patting his father’s shoulder. “I’ll be good, and someday—” But he could not name his private dream, not then. It trembled on the edge of his mind, half-visible in a cloud of wishes too vague to express. He would do something wonderful, something that made the village and the sergeant both proud of him. Something very brave, that yet hurt no one but bad men, or monsters.

“Go in peace, Gird, as long as you may,” his father said. “I pray the Lady forgives your service of iron.”

His father always said that, and it always annoyed him now. Alyanya, the Lady of Flowers, the Lady of Peace, the Lady whose permission they must have each spring to touch the land with plow or spade—Gird thought of her in his mind as a more beautiful form of the village maids. Rahel, maybe, with shining hair down her back, or Estil whose perfect breasts swung dizzyingly with every stroke of the scythe during haying. Those girls, those flower-scented soft-skinned girls with their springtime bodies swaying along the lanes, those girls didn’t mind his “service of iron.” No, he had seen them glance, seen them smile sideways at him, while farm lads his age received no flicker of eyelash at all.

And surely the Lady herself, whatever else she was, understood the need for soldiers—surely she also admired broad shoulders, strength, the courage of a man with bright weapons in his hand. The sergeant had told him an old tale about Alyanya and Tir, in which the Lady had her Warrior guardian, and was glad of his service. He had never heard such a tale at home, but it made sense, the way the sergeant told it. That the iron of plow and spade was but another form of the iron of sword and spear, and the Lady’s consent to one was as gracious as her consent to the other. “Bright harvest,” the sergeant’s tale had sung, “born of this wedding, child of this marriage—” Girl and Lady, he thought to himself, both know and want the strong arm, the bright steel. But he did not argue with his father, as he had once the year before. His father was a farmer, born and bred, and would die as a farmer—may it not be soon! he thought piously—and he could not expect a farmer to understand soldiers’ things.

He walked back through the late-spring night, with starlight glittering in the puddles alongside the lane, as happy as he could imagine being. He was Gird, the local farmer’s son who had made good, had made a place for himself in the lord’s household, by the strength of his arm and the courage of his heart.

Then the lord count arrived from the king’s court. All the guards stood rigid in the courtyard for that: Gird in the back row, with the other recruits. Tall as he was, he had a good view of the cavalcade. A halfsquad of guards, looking somehow older and rougher than those he had met, on chunky nomad-bred horses, followed by two boys that looked younger than Gird on tall, light-built mounts. Behind them, a prancing warhorse with elaborate harness embroidered and stamped on multicolored leathers. And on the warhorse, their lord—Gird’s liege lord, Count Seriast Vanier Dobrest Kelaive—a sour-faced young man in orange velvet, black gloves, tall black boots, and a black velvet cap with an orange plume. He looked, Gird thought, like a gourd going bad in storage—a big orange gourd spotted with fungus.

Immediately he suppressed the thought. This was his lord, his sworn liege, and for the rest of his life he would be this man’s loyal vassal. His eyes dropped to the horse, the saddle, the tall polished boots. There were his spurs, the visible symbol of his knighthood, long polished shafts and delicate jeweled rowels. The steward came forward; the squires dismounted, handing their horses to grooms. One of them held the lord’s bridle; the other steadied the off stirrup while he dismounted. Gird watched every detail. So far he had not had a chance to ride more than the mule that turned the millsweep. But in watching the horse, he heard everything, heard the steward’s graceful speech of welcome, the curt response.

He knew, as did they all, that the young lord had been educated at the king’s court in Finyatha; this year, at Summereve, he would take over his own domain, and the steward’s rule would end. Everyone had liked that idea—or almost everyone—and had told one another tales of the steward’s harshness. A young lord, they’d said, their own lord, living finally on his own domain, would surely be more generous. The steward would have to do his bidding, not make up orders of his own.

But now, seeing the young lord in person, Gird had a moment of doubt. For all the complaints he’d heard of the steward’s harshness, most years no one went hungry. The sergeant had told him of other lands where brigands or war brought famine. Here, despite the fees, a hardworking family could prosper, as his had, with one brother tenanting his own cottage, and Arin soon to marry. Would things be better under the young count?

Still, Summereve, only a few days away, would bring a great day for both of them. The lord’s investiture, in the moments after midnight. He could not imagine what solemn rituals gave one of the lords dominion; the sergeant made it clear that it was none of their business. Perhaps the sergeant himself had never seen. Village rumor, he remembered, had it that the lords gained their great powers when they took office. But he had never seen any lord, or anyone with powers beyond the steward’s ability to ferret out the truth when someone lied. He could not begin to imagine what kind of powers their young lord might have, or use. He pulled his mind back from this speculation to his own prospects. His promotion from recruit to guard private, the next afternoon, would be part of the lord’s formal court, the first occasion on which the count would show his wisdom and ability to rule well. Gird had his new uniform ready, had every bit of leather oiled and shining, every scrap of metal polished.

He let his eyes wander to the rest of the entourage. Behind the lord’s horse came others equally gaudily caparisoned: young nobles in velvets and furs, sweating in the early summer heat. Young noblewomen, attended each by maids and chaperons, riding graceful horses with hooves painted gold and silver. They began to dismount, in a flurry of ribbons and wide-sweeping sleeves, a gabble of voices as loud and bright as a flight of birds in the cornfield. As the young lord passed his steward’s deferential bow, and led the party into the house, Gird felt a surge of excitement. The real world, the great world of king’s court, the outside world he had never seen, had come to him, to his own village, and he would be part of it.

Chapter Three

Behind the main mass of the lord’s hall lay the walled gardens. To the east, the fruit orchard, with its neatly trimmed plums and pears, its rare peach trained against a southern wall. To the west, the long rows of the vegetable garden, mounds of cabbage like a row of balls, the spiky blue-green stalks of onions and ramps, the sprawling vine-bushes of redroot. Ten-foot stone walls surrounded each garden, proof against the casual thief and straying herdbeast. But not, of course, against the daring of an occasional boy who would brag the rest of his life about a theft of plum or pear from the lord’s own garden.

Meris, son of Aric, now the tanner’s apprentice, had taken a plum the year before, but it was partly green. This year, he determined to take a sackful, and share them out, and they would be ripe ones, too. The lord’s best plum tree, as Meris knew well (for his uncle was a skilled pruner of trees, and worked on them), was the old one in the middle of the garden, the only survivor of a row of plums grafted from scions of the king’s garden in Finyatha. Its fruit ripened early, just before Summereve, medium-sized reddish egg-shaped plums with a silver bloom and yellow flesh.

It seemed to him that the young lord’s arrival would be an excellent time to make his raid. The lord and his retinue would be busy, and nearly everyone else would be watching the excitement in the forecourt. So as soon as the first horns blew across the field, signaling the approaching cavalcade, Meris left off scraping the hair from the wet hide he was working on, and begged his master to let him go.

“Oh, aye, and if I don’t you’ll be so excited you’ll likely scrape a hole in it. Very well . . . put it back to soak, and begone with you. But you’ll finish that hide before supper, Meris, if it takes until midnight.”

With the prospect of a belly full of his lord’s best plums, a delayed supper was the last thing Meris needed to worry about. He grinned his thanks and darted from the tannery. He had hidden what he needed behind a clump of bushes on the east side of the lord’s wall . . . a braided rawhide rope with a sliding loop. Other boys used borrowed ladders, and he’d heard of the smith’s boy using some sort of hook tied to rope, but he had found that the looped rope could nearly always find a limb to fasten on. With a little support from the rope, and the skill of his bare feet on the rough-cut stone walls, he had always managed to get over. And the rawhide rope, without a hook or other contrivance, never attracted the suspicious attention of the guard. Once they’d found it, and he watched from the bushes as they shrugged and left it in place. A herdsman’s noose, they’d said, dropped by some careless apprentice. Let the lad take his master’s punishment, and braid another.

He waited, now, in the same clump of bushes, watching people stream by from the eastern fields. Soon no one passed. He heard a commotion around the wall’s corner, from the village itself. Let it peak, he thought. Let the lord arrive. He waited a little longer, then glanced around. No one in sight, not even a distant flock. He swung the noose wide, as he’d practiced, and tossed it over the fence. He heard the thrashing of leaves as he pulled, and it tightened. He tugged. Firm enough.

Standing back a bit from the base of the wall, he threw himself upward, finding a toehold, and another. Whenever he found nothing, he used the rope, but most of it was skill and scrambling. At the wall’s top, he flattened himself along it and gave a careful look at the hall’s rear windows. Once he’d been seen by a servant, and nearly caught. But, as he’d expected, nothing moved in those windows. Everyone must be watching the forecourt, and the young lord’s arrival. He pulled up his rope, and coiled it on the top of the wall. He could gain the wall from the inside by climbing one of the pears trained along it; he needed the rope only for getting in. This time, though, he planned to use it to lower the sack of stolen fruit on his way out. He checked his sack, took another cautious look around, and climbed quickly down a pear tree to the soft grass under the trees.

He heard a blast of trumpets from the forecourt, and grinned. Just as he’d planned: complete silence in the gardens, and everyone out front gaping at the lord. Silly. He was going to be there long enough for all to see, so why bother? Meris glanced around, still careful. No sign of anyone. One of the gates between the fruit orchard and the vegetable garden was open; he could see the glistening cabbage heads, the spikes of onion.

He moved forward. None of the pear trees had ripe fruit, but all were heavy with green pears. One of the golden plums was ripe; a single fruit lay on the grass beneath. Meris snatched it up and bit into it. Sun-warm and sweet, the juice slid down his throat. He spat the pit into the grass and plucked several of the golden plums for his sack. He took a few red plums from another tree, and then found himself at the old one, the “king tree” as his uncle called it.

It was loaded with ripe and overripe plums; clearly the steward had decided to leave it for the young lord’s pleasure. Ordinarily, Meris knew, the trees were picked over every day to prevent loss to bird and wasp. But here the limbs drooped, heavy with plums, and the grass beneath was littered with fallen fruit. Wasps buzzed around these; the air was heavy with the scent of plum. Meris stepped forward, careful of the wasps beneath, and started picking.

He had nearly filled his sack, when he heard a door slam at the far end of the garden. He looked over his shoulder. Surely the welcoming ceremonies would have taken longer than this! He could see nothing between the trees, but he heard voices coming nearer. To go back, he would have to cross the central walk, in clear view of whatever busybody gardener had come back to work. But on this side, only a few steps away, was the open door to the vegetable gardens. He could outrun any gardener, he was sure, but he might be recognized. If he could hide for a little . . .

Quietly, he eased through the garden door, still without seeing whose were the oncoming voices, and found himself in unknown territory. To his left, rows of cabbage and onion stretched to the rear of the stable walls. Ahead were the beanrows, tall pole frames with bean vines tangling in them, only waist-high at this season. In a few weeks the beanrows would have been tall enough, but right now he’d have to crawl in between the poles. Scant cover, and once he was among them, a long way to any of the walls. On his right, the low matted redroots, with gourds beyond them, and some feathery-leaved plants he’d never seen before. The wall he’d come through was covered with some sort of vine; it had orange flowers and was trimmed off a foot or so below the wall-height. He saw no one, in the whole huge garden, but he saw no place to hide quickly if someone came, in.

He flattened himself against the wall by the open door, and listened. Guards, they sounded like, rough voices. Perhaps the lord had sent them to check on everything—though Meris thought he should have trusted his local sergeant. The voices had passed beyond, and then he heard them coming back, heard the steady stride, the faint chink of metal on metal. Guards, sure enough. He dared a look, saw a broad back in the orange and black striped tunic, no one he recognized. Guards who had come with the young lord, then. They were through; they passed by, and kept going. He listened to their heavy step all the way down the main walk.

He grinned to himself. His luck was holding. In a mad impulse, he darted forward and yanked two onions out of the ground and stuffed them in his sack. And a ramp. Ramps, the onion cousin that none of the peasants was allowed to grow, brought from the old south, so they’d always heard, and sold sometimes on market days for high prices—he would have a ramp of his own, the whole thing. He might even plant it, under the forest edge, and grow more. Then he stood up.

“Hey—you there!” In the time it had taken him to pull a ramp, one of the gardeners had entered by the stable doors. Meris did not wait to see what would happen; he bolted straight for the door into the orchard. Behind him, the gardener’s yell had started others yelling. He slammed the door behind him and threw the latch; it might slow them an instant. Then he was off, running between the trees as hard as he could pelt, the sack of stolen fruit banging his thigh.

He hardly saw the group of people strolling along the main walk before he had run into them, knocking one man flat. He heard high-pitched cries, and deeper yells of rage, and kept going, knocking aside someone’s grab at his arm. It seemed the orchard had grown twice as wide; tree limbs thrashed his face. Behind him now were the heavy feet of guardsmen as well. When he came to the wall, he swarmed up the pear tree as fast as a cat fleeing a wolf, and gained its top, Here he paused a moment. The guards were too heavy for the pears; they’d never be able to climb so high, he thought. Of course, they’d bring ladders . . . He caught a flash of bright orange between the trees below, and someone yelled. Hardly thinking, he snatched an onion from his bag and fired it at the shape. Another bellow; he turned to leap into the thicket below. He’d have to risk mashing his fruit. He had no time to lower it carefully; in fact, he’d have to run off without it if he didn’t want to be caught.

The sergeant kept them on parade in the forecourt even though the young lord had gone on into his hall. He might come back out; besides, the peasants were still milling about in the lane near the gates. When the noise began, a reverberant yell from somewhere deep in the hall, the sergeant sent squads in at once, one through the hall itself. Almost as soon as they disappeared into the hall, they came boiling back out again, running for the gates. Gird, with the other recruits, knew that something had happened, but not what; the sergeant silenced them with curses when they asked, and finally sent them off to the barracks. There they shifted from foot to foot, nervous as young colts in a pen. They dared not sit on the bunks made ready for inspection; they dared not do anything, lest it be the wrong thing.

Not long after, they were called back. The sergeant looked as grim as Gird had ever seen him; no one dared speak. He hurried them into formation, marched them once more to the forecourt. This time they were told to form a line dividing the forecourt in half. On one side, the lord and his steward, and the guardsmen. On the other, the villagers, crowding in behind Gird and the other recruits. And between them, his shirt torn half off his back, Meris son of Aric.

Gird stared at the scene before him, bewildered. He had known Meris all his life; the younger boy had a name for mischief, but Gird had thought him safely apprenticed to the tanner. What could Meris have done, to cause such an uproar?

The boy, held tightly by two guardsmen, stood as if lame, leaning a bit to one side. Gird could see a bruise rising over his eye. On the far side of the court, the lord started forward, slapping one black glove against the other. The steward laid a hand on his arm, was shaken off with a glare, and stepped back.

“What’s his name?” asked the lord. No one answered for a moment; Gird thought no one was sure who should, or how the young lord should be addressed. Then the steward spoke up.

“Meris, son of Aric,” he said. “A tanner’s apprentice.”

The young lord flung a glance back at the steward, and nodded. “Meris, son of Aric . . . and is Aric here?”

“No, my lord. Aric is a herdsman; your cattle are in the pastures beyond the wood right now; he is with them.”

“And the tanner, his master: where is he?”

A movement among the villagers, and the tanner stepped forward. “Here, sir.”

“Sir count, churl.” The lord looked him up and down. “A fine master you are—did you teach your ’prentice to thieve, is that it?”

“Sir?” The tanner’s face could not have been more surprised if he’d found himself dyed blue, Gird thought. The young lord barked a contemptuous laugh at him.

“You mean to claim you did not know where he was? You did not know he was stealing fruit from my orchard? From the way he ran straight for that pear tree, I daresay had done it often before. You know the law: a master stands for his apprentice’s misdeeds—”

“Stealing fruit?” Gird did not know the tanner well; the man had moved into the village only three years before, when old Simmis had died and left the tannery vacant. But he seemed honest enough now, if perhaps none too bright. “But he begged the time off to see your honor’s coming—”

“While you, I presume, were too busy to see your liege lord’s arrival, or to supervise your apprentice properly?”

The tanner looked from lord to steward and back again, seeing no help anywhere. “But—but sir—I didn’t know. I thought he—”

“You should have known; he was your apprentice. Be glad I don’t have you stripped naked and in the stocks for this; the steward will collect your fine later.” The lord smiled, and turned to the boy. “And as for this young thief, this miscreant who was not content to steal my fruit, but boldly assaulted my person—you’ll climb no more walls, and steal no more fruit, and I daresay you’ll remember the respect you owe your lord to the end of your life.” The steward moved, as if he would speak, but the young count stared him down. “It is your laxness, Cullen, that’s given these cattle the idea they can act so. You should have schooled them better.”

The courtyard was utterly silent for a long moment. Then a soft murmur began, like the first movement of leaves in a breeze, rustling just within hearing. Gird felt a wave of nausea, as he realized with the others that the young lord intended far worse than the steward ever had. Even now he could not believe that Meris had assaulted the lord: Meris had never assaulted anyone. His mischiefs were always solitary.

It was then, as his eyes slid from one to another, not quite meeting anyone’s as their eyes avoided his, that he noticed the pin clasping the young count’s cloak. A circle, like the symbol of Esea’s Eye, the Sunlord, but sprouting horns . . . like a circle of barbed chain, the barbed chain the followers of Liart had left on his bunk. And those three, of all the soldiers, were untroubled by the count’s malice . . . were eager, he realized, for whatever the count wanted.

What the count wanted, as events proved, was threefold; to terrorize his peasantry, to impress his friends from the king’s court, and to leave Meris just enough life to suffer long before dying. Long before the end of it, Gird and many others had heaved their guts out onto the paved court, had fallen shaking and sobbing to their knees, trying not to see and hear what they could not help seeing and hearing. Not even his sergeant’s fist on his collar, the urgent “Get up, boy, before it’s you—” could steady him. He staggered up, shook free of the sergeant’s hold, and bolted across the empty space into the crowd, fighting his way to the gate like a terrified ox from a pen.

He had moved so suddenly, with so little forethought, that no one caught him; behind him the villagers reacted to his panic with their own, screaming and thrashing away from the scene of torture. That kept the rest of the soldiers busy, though Gird didn’t realize it. He ran as if he could outrun his memories, down the long lane past his father’s cottage, out beyond the great field, the haymeadows, fighting his way blindly through the thickets beside the creek, and through the rolling cobbles to the far side. Then he was running in the wood, staggering through briar and vine, falling over the gnarled roots of the old trees to measure his length again and again. He never noticed when his uniform tore, when thorns raked his arms and face, tore at his legs. Higher in the wood, and higher . . . past the pens where they fed the half-wild hogs, past the low hut where the pigherder stayed in season. He startled one sounder of swine, so they snorted and crashed through the undergrowth with him for a space. Then he was falling into another branch of the creek, and turning to clamber upstream, instinct taking over where his mind couldn’t, his legs finally losing their stride to let him topple into the rocky cleft his brother Arin had shown him all those years ago.

For some time he knew nothing, felt nothing, and the hours passed over him. He woke, with a countryman’s instinct, at dusk, when the evening breeze brought the hayfield scent up over the wood, and tickled his nose with it. He ached in every limb; his scratches burned and itched, and his mouth tasted foul. Until he was up on his knees, he did not remember where he was, or why—but then a spasm of fear and shame doubled him up, and sourness filled his mouth. He gulped and heaved again. Meris, a boy he had known—a lad who had tagged behind him, more than once—would never walk straight again, or hold tools, and he had worn the uniform of the one who had done it.

He could hear his mother’s voice ringing in his head. This was what she’d meant, about taking service of iron, and leaving the Lady of Peace. This was what his father had feared, that he would use his strength to hurt his own people. Scalding tears ran, down his face. He had been so happy, so proud, only a few days before . . . he had been so sure that his family’s fears were the silly fears of old-fashioned peasants, “mere farmers,” as the sergeant so often called them.

Arin came to the cleft before dawn, sliding silently between the trees. “Gird?” he called softly. “Gird!—you here?”

Gird coiled himself into an even tighter and more miserable ball as far back as he could burrow, but Arin came all the way in, and squatted down beside him.

“You stink,” he said companionably, one brother to another. “The dogs will have no trouble.”

“Dogs?” Gird had not thought of dogs, but now remembered the long-tailed hounds that had gone out with the tracker after wolves.

“I brought you a shirt,” said Arin. “And a bit of bread. Go wash.” The very matter-of-factness of Arin’s voice, the big brother he had always listened to, made it possible for him to unclench himself and stagger to his feet. He took the shirt from Arin without looking at it, and moved out of the cleft before stripping off his clothes. In the clean chill of dawn, he could smell himself, the fear-sweat and vomit and blood so different from the honest sweat of toil. Arin smelled of onions and earth. He wished he could be an onion, safe underground. But the cold water, and a bunch of creekside herbs crushed to scrub with, cleansed the stench from his body. His mind was different: he could still hear Meris scream, still feel, as in his own body, the crack of breaking bones.

“Hurry up,” said Arin, behind him. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

Gird rinsed his mouth in the cold water, and drank a handful, then another. He pulled on the shirt Arin had brought; it was barely big enough across the shoulders, and his wrists stood out of the sleeves, but it covered him. Arin handed him the bread. Gird had not thought he was hungry, but he wolfed the bread down in three bites. He could have eaten a whole loaf.

By this time it was light enough to see his brother’s drawn face, and read his expression. Arin shook his head at him. “Girdi, you’re like that bullcalf that got loose and stuck in the mire three years ago—do you remember? Thought he was grown, he was so big, but once out of his pen and in trouble, he bawled for help like any new-weaned calf,” Gird said nothing; he could feel tears rising in his eyes again, and his throat closed. “Girdi, you have to go back.” That opened his eyes, and his throat.

“I can’t!” he said, panting. “Arin, I can’t—you didn’t see—”

“I saw.” Arin’s voice had hardened. “We all saw; the count made sure of it. But it’s that or outlaw, Girdi, and you won’t live to be an outlaw—the count will hunt you down, and the fines will fall on our family.”

It was another load of black guilt on top of the other. “So—so I must die?”

“No.” Arin had picked up a stick, and poked it into the moss-covered ground near the creek. “At least—I hope not. What your sergeant said was that if someone knew where you were, and if you’d turn yourself in, he thought he could save your life. And we’d not lose our holding. The steward . . . the steward’s not with the count in this. You saw that. But you have to come in, Gird, on your own. If they chase and capture you—”

“I can’t be a soldier,” said Gird. “I can’t do that—what they did—”

“So I should hope. They don’t want you now, anyway.” Even in his misery, that hurt. He knew he’d been a promising recruit, barring his slowness in learning to read; he knew the sergeant had had hopes for him. And now he’d lost all that, forever. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he’d also lost plentiful free food. “We can use you,” Arin went on. “We always could.”

His mind was a stormy whirlwind of fear and grief and shame. He could imagine what the sergeant would say, the sneers of the other men, the ridicule. And surely he would be punished, for disgracing them so, and breaking his oath of service. Would he be left like Meris, a cripple? Better to die . . . and yet he did not want to die. The thought of it, hanging or the sword in his neck—and those were the easy ways—terrified him. Arin’s look was gentle.

“Poor lad. You’re still just a boy, after all, aren’t you? For all the long arms and legs, for all the bluster you’ve put on this past spring.”

“I’m—sorry.” He could not have said all he was sorry for, but a great sore lump of misery filled his head and heart.

“I know.” Arin sighed. “But I’m not sorry to think of you working beside me, Gird, when this is over. Come now: wash your face again, and let’s be going back.”

He felt light-headed on the way, but the stiffness worked out of his legs quickly. His soiled uniform rolled under his arm, he followed Arin down paths he hardly remembered.

“We need to hurry,” said Arin over his shoulder. “They were going to start searching again this morning, and I’d like to get you down to the village before they set the dogs loose.”

“What—what happened, after—”

“After you bolted? Near a riot, that was, with everyone screaming and thrashing about. It took awhile to settle, and the count had more to think of than you. Then your sergeant came to our place, and talked to father. Said you’d deserted, and they’d have to hunt you unless you came back on your own, and even if you did it might go hard with you. He didn’t like the count’s sentence on Meris any more than the rest of us, but . . . he had to go along. He took out a few of the men late in the evening, calling for you. I was sure you’d come up here.”

“I didn’t think,” said Gird. “I just couldn’t stand it—”

“Mmm. Then the steward came, after dark.” Arin stepped carefully over a tangle of roots and went on. “Said we’d lose the holding, the way the count felt. He’d come down to show off his inheritance to his friends from court, all those fine lords and ladies, and then Meris hit him with an onion—”

“He what!”

“That’s right. You probably don’t know what really happened. Meris was stealing fruit, thinking everyone would be busy out front, but the count wanted to show the ladies the garden, and hurried through. So when Meris was spotted, he ran straight into the count and knocked him flat, in front of his friends, and then fired an onion at him from the top of the wall. Probably thought it was a guard. Poor lad.”

Gird was silent, thinking what sort of man would cripple a boy for such a ridiculous mistake.

“He was wrong, of course, and now we’re all in trouble, from the steward on down, but—” Arin flashed a grin back over his shoulder. “At least you didn’t take part in it—and if they want to call it cowardice, well, I say brave men have better to do than batter rash boys into ruin.”

“I don’t want to die,” said Gird suddenly, into the green silence of the wood.

“No one does,” said Arin, “but sick old men and women. Did you think a soldier would never see death?”

“No, but—but I didn’t think it would be like this. If it is, I mean.” He didn’t expect an answer to that, and got none. Early sun probed through the leaves, shafts of golden light between the trees. The wood smelled of damp earth, herbs, ripening bramble-berries, a whiff here and there of pig or fox or rabbit. He was afraid, but he could not shut out the richness of the world around him, the springy feel of the leafmold under his feet. Air went in and out his nose despite his misery.

They came to the straggling end of the lane without being seen. Gird hesitated to follow Arin into the open, but his brother strode on without looking back, trusting him. He could see no one, but a distant shepherd far across the fields. Up the lane toward the village. Now he could see the first cottages, his father’s well, the lane beyond, the great fields to his right. A few women at the well, someone (he could not tell who) behind the hedge in front of their cottage.

Arin spoke again. “It’s better if you go alone, Gird. Can you do that?”

Cold sweat sprang out all over him. Alone? But he knew Arin was right. The sergeant and steward would know that his brother had gone to bring him in—the whole village knew already—but if he went the rest of the way alone it could go unspoken. Less chance that more punishment would fall on Arin.

The soldiers were just starting out from the gates when he came in sight of them; the sergeant must have delayed as long as he could. They paused, and the sergeant gestured. Gird walked on. His legs felt shaky again, and it was hard to breathe. When he was close enough, he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t salute, not with his filthy uniform under his arm, and a peasant shirt on his back. The sergeant’s face was closed, impassive.

“Well, Gird,” he said.

“Sir,” said Gird miserably, looking down at his scuffed and dirty boots. He forced himself to meet the sergeant’s eyes. “I—I was wrong, sir.” One of the men guffawed; the sergeant cut it short with a chop of his hand.

“You broke your oath,” the sergeant said. He sounded weary and angry together, someone who had come near the end of his strength as well as his patience. “Right in front of the count himself—” He stopped. “You’re carrying your uniform? Right. Give it here.” Gird handed it over, and the sergeant took it, his nostrils pinched. “Take off your boots, boy.” Gird stared a moment, then hurried to obey. Of course the boots were part of the uniform; he should have thought of that. His feet, pale and thin-skinned from more than a year of wearing boots daily, found the dusty lane cool and gritty. The sergeant jerked his head at Keri, one of the other recruits, who came to take the boots, and the uniform both. “We’ll burn them,” said the sergeant. “We want nothing tainted with cowards’ sweat.” Gird felt himself flushing; the sergeant nodded at him. “Yes, you. You were wrong, and so was I, to think you’d ever make a soldier. I should have known, when you flinched from it before . . .” His voice trailed away, as the steward came out the gates with the village headman.

The steward gave Gird the same sort of searching look. “So. He came back, did he? Or did you track him down?”

“He came back, sir. Brought his uniform; he’d got a shirt from somewhere.”

The steward looked Gird up and down. “It’s a bad business, boy, to break an oath. Hard to live down. Reflects on the family. The count would make an example of you, but for the sergeant’s report: you’re strong, and docile, and will do more good at fieldwork than you will feeding crows from the gibbet. See that you work, boy, and cause no trouble. One more complaint of you, and your family’s holding is forfeit.” He turned to the headman, ignoring Gird.

The sergeant said, “You heard him. What are you waiting for? Get along to work, boy, and thank your Lady of Peace that you still have the limbs to work with. I wouldn’t mind laying a few stripes on your back myself.”

Chapter Four

In time Gird thought the stripes would have hurt less. He walked back to his father’s cottage, that bright morning, with his feet relearning the balance of walking bare, and his skin prickling with the knowledge that everyone knew he had been disgraced. Had disgraced himself, he reminded himself firmly. That first time along the lane, no one said anything, though he was aware of all the sidelong glances. He made it home without incident, to find Arin waiting for him.

“You’re to clean out the cowbyre,” said Arin, handing him the old wooden shovel. “He thinks it better if you keep out of sight.”

Gird glanced at his mother, busy at her loom. Her expression said “I told you no good would come of it,” as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud. His youngest sister Hara had obviously been told to keep quiet. He wondered if she’d been the one peeking through the hedge earlier. Probably. He took the shovel and went to work.

Across the barton, Arin was mending harness. Beyond the barton wicket, Gird could see a cluster of men in the greatfield. Midmorning now; they’d stopped work for a chat and a drink. He shoveled steadily, piling the dirty straw and manure in the basket, to drag across the barton and toss on the pile just beyond the gate. He wasn’t sure why Arin was staying close—did they think he would run again? And Arin hadn’t asked what happened up at the manor gates. Gird felt as touchy as after his first sunburn each spring. Every glance Arin gave him seemed to be made of flame.

At noon, Hara passed through the cowbyre with their father’s lunch wrapped in a cloth; she gave Gird a cool nod that cut him to the bone. Arin stopped punching holes and lacing straps together, and stretched. He smiled; by then Gird was not sure what that smile meant.

“Come on, then, long-face. It’s not what you’re used to, but it is food.” Arin hardly needed to wash, but Gird was muck to the knees and elbows. He remembered to flick a spatter of clean water out for grace, and washed carefully enough to please the sergeant before going in to get his bowl of mush. It hardly seemed to touch his hunger, but then the look on his mother’s face tightened his throat so that he could not have swallowed another bite.

By late afternoon, he had cleared the cowbyre, and when the cowherd brought the animals back to the village, and Arin led their own three into the barton, he had the stalls spread with fresh straw. He washed up quickly, and started milking. He had always liked the cows, even the crook-horned red cow who slapped his face with her dirty great tail and did her best to tread in the bucket. His father appeared as he was milking the second, but said nothing before going on inside. Gird leaned his head into a warm, hairy flank, and let his hands remember the rhythmic squeeze and pull that brought the milk down quickly and easily. The milk smelled good, no taint of onion or wild garlic. He leaned closer, and gave himself a warm, luscious mouthful.

“I saw that,” said Arin, from around the rump of the third cow. “You know better.” It was the old bantering tone of their boyhood, but it didn’t seem the same.

“Sorry,” said Gird, wishing he weren’t so conscious of the taste of that milk, the richness of it. Their milk was traded to the village cheesemaker; grown men did not drink milk. He felt he could drink the whole bucket. He finished the last quarter, and carried the bucket into the kitchen. From there he could hear the voices in the front room: his father and the steward. What now? he wondered. But his mother, square athwart the kitchen hearth, sent him back to the barton with a wave of her spoon.

He ranged around it, doing every chore he could think of, until his father called him in. It was much like the night the steward had visited to offer him the chance to train: his mother and father sitting stiffly on one side, and the steward at their single table. Arin followed him in. Kara, banished to the kitchen, was as close to the door as she could be, and not be seen by the elders.

“You should know,” said the steward without preamble, “what your rashness will cost your father. He must appear at court, the afternoon of the count’s investiture. I have spoken with the count, and pled what I can: your youth, your father’s record of work, your brothers. But the fact is, the count is angry, and with reason. And your father, head of your family, will be fined. I came to tell him, that he might have it ready to pay, and save himself a night in the stocks.”

Gird met his father’s eyes. His father in the stocks? For his running away?

“You will attend as well, boy, and it may be the count will have something to say to you. He is your lord; he may do as he pleases. Remember your rank, and try—” the emphasis was scornful, “to cause no more trouble.”

When the steward had gone, Gird’s father patted his shoulder. “It’s all right, Gird. You’re here, and alive, and—it’s all right.” Gird knew it was not. For the first time in his life, he realized that he could do harm he could not mend. He felt at once helpless and young, and far removed from the boyish confidence of a few days before.

“What—how much is the fine?” he asked.

His father cleared his throat. “Well. They want repaid all they spent on your training. It’s all in the steward’s accounts, he says. Food, clothing, the coppers he sent me, even barracks room. And then a fine for oath-breaking—” Gird had never really mastered figures, but he knew he’d worn clothes worth far more than his family could have bought him. And eaten more, of better food. His father turned to Arin. “I’ll have to ask you—”

Arin nodded. “Of course. Will it be enough?”

His father scrubbed at his face with both hands. “We’ll see. Gird, you were too young before: come here, now, and see where our coins lie hid.”

He had known it was under some stone in the fireplace; everyone hid valuables that way. But not which—and before his father levered out the stone, he would not have suspected that one. Within was a leather pouch, and in that his father’s small store of coppers and silvers. His father counted it out twice.

“I saved most of your wages, for Arin’s marriage-price, and Hara’s dower. There’s a hand of coppers, and another hand of coppers. But a fine of double the field-fee—that’s a silver and a hand of coppers, and doubled—” He laid it out as he spoke, handling the coins as gingerly as if they were nettles to sting him. Gird held his breath, thinking of the hours of labor, baskets of fruit and grain, that each represented. “And the uniforms—” The last of the coppers went into a row, and his father frowned, shaking his head. “ ‘Tis not enough, even so. They might have let you keep the boots, at least, if we must pay for them.”

“How much?” asked his mother.

“Eight copper crabs, and that’s if the count holds to the steward’s say. I doubt he will. It’ll be a sheep, then, or a furl of cloth.”

“I have a furl, set by,” his mother said. “It was for—”

“No matter what it was for,” said his father harshly. “It is for Gird’s life, now.”

“I know that,” said his mother. Gird watched as she opened the press that stored her weaving, and pulled out a rolled furl of cloth. His father touched it lightly, and nodded.

“We’ll hope that will do,” he said.

The lord held court in the yard, with the count seated beneath an awning striped orange and yellow. None of his noble friends was with him; having sat through his investiture at midnight, they had all slept late.

Despite Gird’s father’s oath to the steward that they would appear, one of the soldiers came that morning to march them up to the manor gates. He had studiously ignored Gird; others had not, small children who had stared and called and been yanked back within cottages by their mothers. Gird’s feet were sore, not yet toughened to going bare, and his shirt had already split. His mother had patched it the night before. He was acutely aware of the patch, of his bare feet, of the difference between Gird, Dorthan’s son, peasant boy, and Gird the recruit.

That contrast was sharpened when he watched the other recruits accepted into service as they gave their oaths to the count, and pinned on the badges of guard private. None of them met his eyes, not even Keri. One by one they came forward, knelt, swore, and returned to the formation. Gird’s heart contracted. For one moment he wanted to throw himself before the count and beg to be reinstated. Then his roving eye saw the stocks, with the stains of Meris’s blood still dark on the wood.

Another case preceded theirs. The steward had intended it, Gird knew, as the ritual single case the new lord must judge; he had saved it back from the spring courts. Now he rushed the witnesses through their stories of missing boundary stone and suspected encroachment on someone’s strip of arable. Clearly not even the plaintiff and defendant thought it was as important as before, compared with Gird and his father. The count concurred with the steward’s assessment, and the loser didn’t bother to scowl as he paid his two copper crabs to the winner, and another to the count.

Then it was their turn. The steward called his father forward; Gird followed two paces behind, as he’d been bidden. To his surprise, the sergeant came too.

The count’s face was drawn down in a scowl of displeasure that didn’t quite conceal an underlying glee. The steward began, explaining how Gird had been recruited.

“A big, strong lad, already known as a hard worker. He seemed brave enough then, as boys go—” He turned to the sergeant.

“Willing to work, yes. Obedient, strong . . . not too quick in his mind, my lord, but there’s good soldiers enough that can’t do more than he did. Never gave trouble in the barracks.”

“And he gave you no hint of his . . . weakness?” The count’s voice this day was almost silken smooth, no hint of the wild rage he’d shown before.

The sergeant frowned. “Well, my lord, he did in a way. He didn’t like hurting things, he said once, and he never did give up his peasant superstitions. Flowers to the well-sprite, and that sort of thing.”

“Complained of hard treatment, did he?”

“No, my lord. Not that. Like I said, a willing enough lad, when it came to hard work, not one to complain at all. But too soft. I put it down to his being young, and never from home, but that was wrong.”

“Indeed.” The count stared at Gird until he felt himself go hot all over. “Big lout. Not well-favored, no quality in him. Some are born cattle, you know, and others are born wolves. You can make sheepdogs of wolves, but nothing of cattle save oxen in yokes. He looks stupid enough. I can’t imagine why you ever considered him; if you want to stay in my service, you’d best not make such mistakes again.”

“No, my lord,” said the sergeant and steward, almost in the same breath.

“Well,” said the count, “to settle young oxen, put stones on the load. You had a recommendation, steward?” The steward murmured; Gird heard again the terms his father had told him. The count nodded. “Well enough, so far as it goes, but not quite far enough. Let one of my Finyathans give the boy a whipping, and if his father wants him whole, let him pay the death-gift for his life. Else geld the young ox, and breed no more cowards of him.” His eyes met Gird’s, and he smiled. “Do you like my judgment, boy?”

Beside him, his father was rigid with shock and fear; Gird bowed as well as he could. The death-gift for a son was a cow and its calf that year. A third of their livestock gone, or his future sons and daughters. He knew his father would pay, but the cost!

The steward muttered again; the count shook his head. “Let the father pay now. What is it to be, fellow?” Gird’s father stepped forward, and laid the pouch of coins, and the furl of cloth, on the table. The steward took the pouch and counted the coins quickly.

“The cow?” he said without looking up. Gird’s father nodded, and the steward noted it down. “Go fetch the cow,” he said brusquely.

“Sir, she’s with the cowherd—”

“Will you fetch the cow or not?” The steward’s face was white. “It’s all one to me whether you have grandsons from this boy.”

Gird’s father bowed. “I’ll go now, sir, may I?” he said, his voice trembling, and backed away. The count laughed.

“ ’Tis no wonder the boy’s a coward, with such a father. At least he’s docile.” The count waved a hand, and one of the Finyathan guards went off, to return in a few moments with a long rod bound in leather. “And you, sergeant, as you erred in choosing him, I don’t doubt you’d like a chance to leave your mark on him?”

Whether he wanted to or not, Gird could not tell, but the sergeant had no choice. That much was clear. Nor did he. He went to the stocks without resistance, hoping he could keep from crying out. He felt the scorn more than the blows, but the Finyathan guard, when the sergeant gave up the rod to him after four or five stripes, had evident delight in his work. The count watched, leaning on one elbow and chatting to the steward without taking his eyes off Gird’s face. By the time his father came back with the cow, Gird had bruises and lumps from more than the rod. He had closed his eyes before they swelled shut, not wanting to see his former friends in the guards as they joined in.

He woke face-down in a puddle of water that had been thrown over him, with the count’s waspish voice saying “Take the oaf away, and pray I forget all this.” His father’s arm helped him up; outside the gates Arin too waited, to help him home.

His head rang. He could not have made it without help. His mother and Kara cleaned the blood off, and muttered over the damage done to the shirt. The rest of that day and night he lay wrapped in a blanket, sipping the bitter brew his mother spooned down him at intervals. For himself, he’d have been glad to have wound-fever and die of it, to be at peace, for his old dreams tormented him like haunts, making mock of his pride. He twisted and groaned, until Arin woke and held him.

“It’s all right, Girdi. It’s over now.” But it was not over, and wouldn’t be. He was sour with his own sweat, disgusted with himself, and shaking with fears he could not express. If things had gone so wrong so fast, what was safe? Arin’s reassurance meant nothing. He remembered the look on the count’s face, the delight in cruelty. He might have been killed—really killed—his life had hung on the count’s whim.

The next morning he forced his stiff, aching body out of bed. He was not sure he could work, but he knew he must. His mother had yet to remake his shirt from the ragged scraps left after his punishment, so she insisted he stay indoors. His father and Arin agreed. Indoors, then, he worked—back to childhood, he thought, scrubbing the stone hearth, washing dishes and pots, carrying buckets of water from the well. It was hot indoors, breathless as Midsummer usually was. Sweat stung in the welts and scrapes; he ignored it, shrugged away his mother’s attempt to put a poultice on the deepest ones. She glared at him.

“You may want a fever, to get out of work, but we’ve no time for that, lad. Stand you there and no more shifting, while I clean this out again.” He felt himself flush, but stood. What else could he do? He had forfeited his chance to adult status. Her fingers were gentler than her voice. The sharp fragrance of herbs worked its way past his misery for a few moments as she stroked the heavy ointment on his back. “ ‘Tis a bad world, lad, where such things happen. But you see what comes of taking iron to mend them. Remember this: no matter how bad it seems, soldiering makes it worse. It always comes hardest on those with the least. Mind your father, keep out of the lord’s eye: that’s best. Notice brings trouble, no matter if it seems good at first. Remember what tree the forester chooses.”

He’d heard that often and often before. It was not in the Lady’s ritual, but it was the village’s favorite truth: notice brings trouble. As bad to be always first in reaping as always last; as bad to be richest as poorest. The tall tree catches the forester’s eye, and the fattest ox suggests a feast. He had never liked it, since he could not have hidden among others even if he wanted to. What, he had wondered, was the tall tree supposed to do? But his trouble would prove the truth as far as the village was concerned, and he expected to hear it many times again.

He was young and strong and healthy; his body healed quickly and he was soon hard at work with his father. But he could not escape the knowledge that he had brought trouble to his family. They had been prosperous, for peasants: three cows, eight ewes, extra cloth laid away, the copper and silver coins that took so long to earn. His father had had a good reputation with the steward, and had no enemies in the village itself.

Now Arin could not marry until they earned the marriage-fee, but before that came the field-fee and house-fee, and the harvest taxes were coming soon. He could help with the work, but he had to eat, and he brought no more land with him, on which more crops could grow, or beasts graze.

His father said nothing of this. He had no need to say it; Gird knew precisely what it meant, what it would cost them all in labor and hunger to regain even a scrap of safety. His feet toughened quicker than his mind. Daylong in the fields he caught the tail end of comments that seemed intended for his ear. The other men said nothing near his father, but left him in no doubt what they thought. Young lout, they said, set himself up for a soldier and then shamed us all with his weakness. He knew some of them had been as sickened as he, but if they remembered it at all, they didn’t say so around him. It was convenient to blame it all on him. He knew, on one side of his mind, that this had always happened so, that once he had done the same, but it still hurt. His former friends stayed away from him, whether because of their fathers’ orders or their own scorn he didn’t know, and soon didn’t care. He was in a deep wallow of misery, just like the bullcalf in the bog Arin had mentioned.

In that first month of trouble, between the event and the harvest, only one mercy intervened. The young count and his entourage left to visit another of his holdings, and the steward conveniently forgot to put Gird on the workroll. In the required workdays, he could work his family’s garden and fieldstrip, while his father and Arin worked the greatfield for the count. And he could do day-labor for anyone hiring work done, taking his pay in a meal away from home more often than hard coin. Most of this was unskilled labor, fetching and carrying. Gird carried water for the masons brought in to raise the count’s orchard walls, and lugged baskets full of clay and broken rock. It was hard work, even for someone of his strength, and he soon felt the difference the change in food made. He came home so tired he could hardly eat, and fell onto the bed as soon as he’d cleaned his bowl.

At harvest, Gird could not avoid the other men and boys. Harvest time gathered in more than crops; the village people worked together and celebrated together, and the year’s stories began to form into chants and tales that would be retold over and over during long winter nights. It was no fault of Gird’s that his disgrace so neatly fit the measures of an old song, “The Thief’s Revenge” and needed but little skill to change a few words. He never knew who sang it first, but its jangling rhymes followed him down the lanes. “He gave a cry and ran away, as fast as he could run—” jibed the little boys. “Eh, Gird, can you outrun a fox? A pig?”

Now his former friends had their own say. A shrug, a wink between them, a shoulder turned to him. Teris even said “If you were going to make such a fuss, you could at least have saved Meris,” which was completely unfair. He could not have saved Meris; no one could. They hadn’t. But they blamed him for Meris, and for trying and failing. Some—Amis among them—said nothing, just watched him. Were they waiting for him to defend himself, to argue? But he had nothing to say. He was too tired to argue, too hungry and too miserable.

The girls never looked his way at all, and he was sure they laughed about him in their little groups. He was careful not to watch them openly and court more ridicule, although he had come to the age where the mere sight of a girl leaning to pull a bucket from a well could send his blood pounding. It was slightly easier to ignore the girls if he wasn’t with the boys. He quit trying to talk to anyone, soon, and kept to his own family.

With all they had lost, that winter was hard. They could not afford to butcher an animal for winter meat; they would need every calf and lamb next spring to pay the field-fee. Gird’s scanty earnings had gone for the fall taxes, along with two of their sheep. That meant less wool next spring, for his mother to spin and weave, and less cloth to trade or sell. At least they had fodder in plenty, for that had been gathered before they lost the extra animals. And Gird roamed the wood bringing back loads of firewood and sacks of nuts. He avoided the nutting parties of the other boys and young men, avoided the last autumn gatherings of dancers at the sheepfold.

Later, he remembered that winter as the coldest, hungriest, and most miserable of his life, although he knew that wasn’t true. There was no real famine; they had beans and grain enough, some cheese. Except for the ritual cold hearth at Midwinter, they had a good fire yearlong. His mother had managed a whole shirt for him, pieced out of scraps, and he had rags enough to wrap his feet. It was the sudden difference, from more than enough to barely enough, that made it seem so bleak.

Meris died in the long cold days after Midwinter. Gird had tried to visit him once, but his family, suffering under a heavy fine as well as Meris’s injuries, wanted no contact with another unlucky boy. Meris had had few friends, but those boys loosed their frustrated rage on Gird when they caught him alone, and battered him into the snow. He might have fought back, to ease his own frustration and grief, but one of them got a bucket over his head. The guards heard the noise, and broke it up; when Gird wrestled the bucket off his head, the sergeant was standing there sucking his teeth speculatively. He said nothing, just watched, as Gird made it to one knee, then another, and staggered off down the lane.

That was the last direct assault, but by then Gird was convinced that everyone was against him. The next time he got a bit of work, and a copper crab, he took it to the smelly leanto behind Kirif’s cottage, where a couple of other men hunched protectively over mugs of sour ale. He knew it was wrong. He didn’t care. For a crab he got more ale than his head would hold, mug after mug, and his father found him snoring against the wall.

That loosed his father’s tongue, where the other had not. “A sot as well as a coward! I didn’t work so hard to save a drunken oaf, lad; this had best be the last time you spend our needs on your own pleasure.” It didn’t feel like pleasure then; his head was pounding and his stomach felt as if it never wanted food again. His father was not finished, however. He heard the full tale of his misdeeds, from the time he’d run off to follow Arin on the pighunt as a child, to the stupidity of going for a soldier, right down to his selfishness and sullenness in the past months. He had not told his father about Meris’s friends attacking him, or what Teris had said; he realized that it wouldn’t do any good now.

He felt almost as guilty as his father seemed to want. It was his fault, no getting around it, and if some of the consequences weren’t fair, nothing ever had been. Only one of the gods cared about fair, that he knew of, and the High Lord was far away, nothing much to do with the village folk or the soldiers, either one. He went back to work doggedly, determined to pay back enough of the debt he owed so that Arin could marry within a year. He didn’t visit the aleshop until after Midsummer, and then with a basket of mushrooms to trade, not good coin his family could use. And he stopped with a single mug, that put a pleasant haze between him and the other villagers.

Arin’s wedding briefly lightened his miseries, for his favorite brother would include Gird in the celebration despite anything he’d done. “Besides,” Arin said, “you’ve worked hard to get my fee together. You might have done much less; it wasn’t all your fault, after all. I know I can depend on you.”

For a wedding, all quarrels ceased. Oreg even donated a pig to the feast. Gird was old enough to wait in the barton with the men, to watch his brother’s dance, and join the drinking afterwards, when the newlyweds were safe abed and women were cleaning up the last of the feast. This was not like Kirif’s leanto; here was a cask of the strong brown brew from a neighboring village, and hearty voices singing all the rollicking old songs he’d grown up with, from “Nutting in the Woods” to “Red Sim’s Second Wife.” He had enough ale to soften the edges of any remarks about him, and joined his loud voice to the others without noticing anyone’s complaint.

But this did not last. Arin and his wife took over the bed he had shared with Gird, as was only right; Gird slept on the floor near the hearth that winter. Arin’s wife, soon with child, began to have the childsickness, waking early every morning to heave and heave, filling the cottage with the stink of her illness. Gird, now on the work rolls, had his own duties to fulfill when the required days came around; he could no longer replace his brother and free one worker for the family. When Arin’s first child was born, another mouth to feed, they had not yet put by enough for the field-fee. That year was leaner than the one before.

Soon Gird felt that he would never get anywhere at all. Arin’s wife lost a child, but was soon pregnant again. As hard as they all could work was barely enough to feed them; they had no chance to save towards replacing the sheep or cow Gird had cost them. Year flowed into year, a constant struggle to survive. Gird could not miss the gray in his father’s hair, the cough that every winter came sooner and lasted longer.

Chapter Five

“I don’t see why you care.” Gird hunched protectively over his mug. The mood Amis was in, if he turned around to argue, Amis would grab it away. He didn’t have anything to trade for another, and this one would barely fuzz the edges of his misery.

“You’re turning into a drunk,” said Amis, far too briskly. “It’s been what—three years?—and all you do is work and drink—”

“And eat,” said Gird. “Don’t forget that—they tell me all the time at home.”

“And eat. You never come out with us—”

Gird shrugged, and took a swallow. Worse than usual, it tasted, but the bite in his throat promised ease later. “You may want me; the others don’t.”

“It’s past, Gird. So you’re not a soldier, so what? We didn’t like it that much when you were—”

“That’s true. You don’t much like anything I do: fight or not fight, run or not run, drink or not drink. If I gave up ale, Amis, would that make me friends? Not likely.”

“You know what I mean. Drink for celebration, yes—with all of us, a lot of singing and dancing and rolling the girls—but not this way. Come with us tonight, anyway.”

Gird swallowed the rest of the mug he allowed himself, and tried to think past the rapidly spreading murk in his head. Walk across the fields to some sheepfold, listen to a wandering harper play, dance with—it would have to be girls from the other village, none from here would have him. And then back by daybreak, to work—his feet ached, his back ached, all he wanted was his bed. But at home his father’s eyes would question silently: what did you take, to trade for that drink? What will you take next? It was my own, he answered that unspoken question. I found the mushrooms, I picked them when you were resting, it’s my right—

“All right,” he said gruffly. Amis grinned at him, steadied him as he stood. He did not look to see the reactions of the other men drinking in Kirif’s hut; he thought he knew exactly what he’d see if he did.

Somewhere on the walk, two others joined them: Koris and Jens, he’d known them all his life. His skin prickled; he was sure they were none too happy to find him coming along. But nothing they said led that way. It was all the common talk of their village, Jens courting Torin and her father’s dislike of it, a wager between Koris and his older brother on the sex of an unborn calf, Teris’s problems with his wife’s mother, how the last spring storm had damaged the young fruit on the trees. The thought passed through his mind that, but for subjects, it was much like the talk of his mother and aunt and sisters, that nearly drove him mad when he had to be indoors listening to it. For all that Jens and Koris talked of the girls, while Effa and Kara talked of the boys, it was the same talk. Who liked, who spurned, who loved secretly—who would be honest, and who lied in all encounters—whose work could be trusted, and who put rotten plums in the bottom of the basket.

He said nothing, having nothing to say, as the cool night air gradually blew the fumes of ale away. They were walking over the higher pastures sunrising of the village—east, as the lords called it. Under his feet the turf made an uneven carpet; overhead the spring stars blossomed as the night darkened. It had been a long time since he’d been out in the dark looking up, his gaze unmisted by drink. Some night-blooming plant—he knew he should know the name, but he’d forgotten—spread rare perfume on the air, and every lungful he took in seemed important, as if it carried a secret message.

They could see the sheepfold from the ridge, dark against the leaping flames of the fire built in the outer enclosure. As they came down the slope, the harpsong came to greet them, first the more carrying notes, then all of them, a quick rhythm that made them hurry. It ended, and voices rose in noisy swirls of greeting, flirtation, argument. Gird lagged as the others moved forward. He saw Jens edge toward a darker corner. There was Torin, who must have come earlier with her friends. Koris glanced back at him, and Gird stepped into the brighter firelight, not quite sure what he was going to do. He hadn’t been to one of these since he was old enough to be serious about it. Boys the age he’d been lounged against the low stone wall, or crouched atop, knocking elbows and joking about the older ones.

At least three times a growing season, from early spring to fall, the young unmarried men and women of five villages met at this communal sheepfold. Gird had no idea how the dates were set, only that the word would spread through the young men—tomorrow night, tonight—and those who wished would go. One cold autumn evening, the first year he’d gone, there’d been only three young men and two women, and the music had come from a ragged lad playing a reed pipe. Usually there were more, and always someone from outside, a stranger, to play the music they danced to. But he had not come since he left the guard’s training.

He heard someone say his name, across the fire, and his head jerked up. He couldn’t see who, even when he squinted against the flames. So. They’d heard the story too, no doubt, and it would all be told over again. He glared at the coals beneath the burning wood, that half-magical heap of colored lights and mysterious shapes that seemed to be struggling to say something. A long hiss ended in a violent pop, and he jumped.

“I wonder what it said that time.” The girl’s voice held humor, as well as warmth. Gird didn’t look at her.

“What all fires say,” he said.

“Here’s home and safety,” she said. And then, surprisingly, “Here’s danger; here’s death.”

Gird turned. She had a broad face, boldly boned for strength, not beauty, and all he could tell of her coloring in that uncertain light was that she was darker than he. Big capable hands held the ends of her shawl; she looked like any other young woman. Except for those eyes, he thought, watching the perfect reflection of the fire in them. Except for the mind that said those words.

“You’re Gird,” she said. “The one who left the guards.”

“Yes.” He wished he hadn’t looked at her.

“Are they hard on you?”

He looked again, once more surprised. “Now?” She said nothing, and he wondered whether he dared be honest. Silence lengthened. No one else came near them; he could feel no other attention, no other pressure than her quiet interest. “At first,” he began, “it was worst on my family—my father, my brothers—” He told her about that, the fines they’d had to pay, the extra labor on the roads. She said nothing, only nodding when he broke off. Tentatively, warily, he told her more. The guards themselves had bothered him least—even now that surprised him, that the sergeant, after that one explosion, had been fair, if distant, and the other soldiers neutral. “I’m just another farmer’s son to them. They don’t bother me, if they see me; they treat me no differently than the others. They never teased—” His head went down, remembering those who did, whose taunts he could not answer.

“It’s like rape,” she said. He stared at her, shocked and ready to argue, but she was still talking. “They blame the blameless, the victim: they always do. When the young count’s houseparty went hunting our way, and one of them took my cousin, took her there in the street just for the excitement of it, everyone blamed her. My aunt said ‘Oh, if you hadn’t loitered there,’ and the lad who loved her—or said he did—had nothing to say but blame. All her fault, it was, but how could she help it? They blame you, for not preventing what they never moved to prevent.”

“But I wasn’t—”

“Not your body,” she said, in a tone that meant he should have understood. Then, “Never mind. If you’re not killed, you’re still alive; so my cousin said, and married elsewhere a year later, after the babe died. She survived; you will; that’s how we all live.”

“It’s not right,” Gird said, in a voice that he remembered in himself from years past.

Her brows went up. “Are we gods, to know right and wrong beyond the law? I hate the way it is, but no one made me a lord.”

He would have answered, or tried to, but the music began again. At close range, the harp drowned out soft words, and the others had begun a song. Gird didn’t know it, but the girl did.

She had a husky singing voice, melodic but not strong, that clung to the melody like a peach to a twig, half-enfolding it. Gird could feel her singing along his body, a warm, slightly furry touch. He wanted to sing with her, at least hum the melody, but his throat was too tight. Another song followed that one, this time an even sadder lament that they all knew. He sang, feeling his voice unkink and lengthen into the line of the song; her voice rolled along beside, rich and mellow. At the end of the many verses, he realized that others had fallen silent to listen, and at once his voice broke harshly, ruining the ending. Someone laughed, across the firelight; Gird flinched as if he’d been slapped, but the girl’s hand was on his arm.

“Never mind,” she said, under cover of the harper’s quick fingering—it would be a jig, this time, and someone had found sticks to patter. Without really looking at the girl, Gird eased back to the angle between wall and fold, not at all surprised to find she had come with him. She stood closer than he found really comfortable; he could have put his arm around her and found her no closer.

“You know my name,” he said, gruffly, unwilling to ask what she might refuse to answer.

“I’m Mali, from the village near the crossing—some call it Fire-oak.” He remembered that name, from his guards’ training; with the name he called up the location, the number of families, all the details he’d been taught. It surprised him; he didn’t know he could remember all that. He looked down at her.

“You knew of me—”

She shrugged, and the shawl slipped back from dark hair. Something marked the side of her face: a scar, a birthmark. Hard to see in that light, but he could just make out a paler path across her cheek. “Most do; that kind of tale spreads. But Amis told me of you, and your past before the Guards. So I wanted to see you, see what they’d made of you.”

“A failure,” Gird said, then jumped as she slugged his arm. Hard: he would have a bruise there.

“Only you can make yourself a failure—and you a great strong lad with a head of solid stone—”

He was wide awake, now, as if he’d been dipped in a well. “What are you, some foretelling witch—?”

Firelight and shadow moved on her face; he could not read her expression. “I? I’m a farmer’s daughter, as you’re a farmer’s son. I’m headstrong too, so they say of me, and a dangerous lass to cross. If you married me you’d have a strong mother of your children, and a loyal friend—”

“Marry—I can’t marry—I’m—”

“A whole man,” she said. Gird could feel his ears go hot; he wanted to grab her and shake her, or disappear into thin air. He knew he was whole; his body was as alive to her as his ears, and far more active. Was this how girls his age bantered? Surely she was bolder than the others.

“I’m sorry,” she said then, in a quiet voice. He could feel her withdrawing without actually moving; she slid the shawl back over her hair. The withdrawal pierced him like a blade. He could not stand if it she left.

“Wait!” he said hoarsely. “I—you—I never heard anyone—”

“It’s no matter.” She wrapped the shawl tightly around herself, hugged her arms. “I’m overbold and wild; I’ve been told often enough. But I’d heard of you, and how you had changed, refusing your friends. I thought perhaps I could help, being a stranger—”

“You did.” Gird rubbed his own arms, feeling the texture of his clothes and skin for the first time in—when?—years? He felt alive, awake, inside and out, and not only in that way which proved men whole. His skin tingled. “I’m—I’m awake,” he said, wondering if she’d understand. Hot tears pricked his eyes; his throat tightened again.

She was looking at him, dark eyes hard to see in that flickering firelight—but he could feel the intensity of her gaze. “Awake?”

“It—oh, I can’t talk here! Come on!” Without thinking, he grabbed her arm and led her around the wall to the entrance. She had stiffened for an instant, but then came willingly, hardly needing his guidance. He barely noticed someone by the gate turning to look, and then they were out beyond the walls, on the open fields, with the firelight twinkling behind them and stars brilliant overhead.

He stopped only when he stumbled over a stone and fell, dragging her down too. He had been crying, he realized, the roaring of blood in his ears louder than any night sound, the smell and taste of his own tears covering up the fragrance on the wind. She had pulled free when he fell, and now crouched, a dimly visible shape, an armspan away. When he got his breath at last, he sat up; she did not move, either towards him or away.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t—I’ve never done that before—”

“I should hope not.” The tone carried tart amusement, but not hostility.

“I had to get away—I couldn’t talk about it there, with those—”

“Only a few of them would still mock you, Gird.”

“It’s not that. It’s—oh, gods, I’m awake again! I didn’t know I wasn’t. I didn’t know I’d gone so numb, and now—”

“Does it hurt, like a leg you’ve sat on too long?”

He drew a long breath, trying to steady his breathing. “Not—hurt, exactly, though it does prickle. It’s more as if I’d been sick, shut indoors a long time, so long I forgot about the colors outside, and then someone carried me out into spring.” He turned to her, wishing he could see her expression. “Did you mean that about marrying?”

To his surprise, she burst out laughing, a joyous rollicking laugh that he could not resist. He didn’t know why it was funny, but he laughed too. Finally, after a last snort, she quieted down, and apologized.

“I shouldn’t laugh at you, I know that, but for someone just waking after long illness, you do move fast. Was this how you courted the girls, back when you were in the guards?”

“I didn’t, back then—I was too young.” Even in starlight, he could see that she’d let the shawl slip back again, revealing her face. His body insisted that he was not too young now; he tried to stay calm. “Mmm—would you sit with me?”

She moved closer, spread her skirts, and sat down almost hip-to-hip. “I thought I was, with you the closest person to me on this whole dark night.”

She had a scent he had not noticed before; now it moved straight from his nose to his heart. Did all women smell like this? He cursed himself for a crazy fool, to have wasted the years in which he might have learned how to court such a girl. He clenched his fists to keep from reaching for her.

“But surely—” His voice broke, and he started again. “But surely you have someone—someone in your village—?”

Her low chuckle warmed his heart. “Alas no, Gird. For I’m the forward, quick-tongued lass you heard tonight; I will not guard my tongue for any man’s content, though I swear by Alyanya there’s no malice in it. And though I’m big and strong enough, and a good cook, I’m not much for threadcraft. My spinning’s full of lumps, and my weaving’s as bad as a child’s. My family’s parrion has always been in threadcraft, though my great-aunt taught me her parrion of cooking—she said I’d been born with a gift that way.”

“My mother and sisters have threadcraft enough,” Gird said. “But a parrion of cooking they’d welcome, even more in herblore than bakecraft.” He could hardly believe they had come so fast to discussion of parrions. Wasn’t that the last part before formal betrothal? He could not remember; he could not think of anything but the girl herself—Mali, he reminded himself firmly—and the smell and feel of her.

“Mine is that,” she said, the weight of her coming now against his arm; he shifted it around her shoulders, and she leaned into him. Where she touched him, her body seemed to burn right through their clothes; he felt afire with longing for her. It was a struggle to speak calmly. He took another long breath of the cold, clean night air.

“Your father?” Gird thought it likely her father wouldn’t agree, given his own reputation. But she shook her head, in the angle of his arm, where he could feel it.

“Grandmother’s our elder, and village elder too—the magelords don’t like it, but they agreed. She’ll be glad enough if anyone wants me, and you’re a farmer’s son, in the same hearthing. But what of your mother?”

“She’ll be happy.” He leaned closer, to smell her hair. Was he really talking of marriage with someone met just this night, and by firelight? Could she be a witch—or, worst of all, a magelady pretending to be peasant, disguised by her magic?

“I have to tell you about this,” said Mali, struggling upright for a moment. He looked at her; she had one hand to the mark on her face. “I’m no beauty, besides my loud tongue. Many call me ugly, for this scar if nothing else.”

“What happened?” It was a chance to breathe, to remind himself of the customs of his people.

Mali made a curious noise that Gird could not interpret, somewhere between a sniff and a snort. “I wish I could claim it came from defending my cousin against the magelords—it happened the same day—but in fact it was my own clumsiness. I was carrying a scythe to my brother in the fields, and tripped. When I came running back, looking for sympathy, there was my cousin in the lane. No one had time for me then, and no wonder. I thought to save my grandmother trouble by treating it myself, but failed to put herin in the poultice, so it scarred. My own fault.” She laid her warm hand on his. “But I will understand if you change—I mean, it’s not fair. I’ve landed on you this night like a fowler’s net on a bird. You must have a free choice, a chance to make up your own mind. See me in daylight and then if you still wish—”

Contending thoughts almost silenced him. Gird eyed her. “Is it that you think you can get nothing better than the coward of the count’s own village? Was I just a last chance for you, is that what you’re saying?”

She sat bolt upright. For an instant he thought she was going to hit him again; the place she’d slugged him before still ached. “You fool! If you don’t want me, just say so. Don’t make it my fault.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did.” She was breathing fast, angry, and he waited. Finally she went on. “I was curious. I’d heard—what I told you. For myself, barring I like a roll as well as anyone, I’d live alone rather than marry anyone’s last chance. Then meeting you—Amis said you were gentle, but he didn’t say how you sang.” Her voice trailed away. “And you’re no coward, whatever you think.”

“You don’t think a man knows himself best?”

Laughter burst out of her again. “Who could? Can water know it’s wet, or stone know it’s hard? What could it measure itself against? I know my feelings, but my grandmother knew I was meant for herblore, not needlecraft or weaving. So with you—did your father or mother think you would make a soldier?”

Surprise again. “I—don’t know. Not really, I suppose, although they feared I could be—”

“Cruel?” He could see her head shake in the starlight. “No, not like that. You can do what you must, but you take no pleasure in giving pain.” He was eased by that, and his suspicions fled. A strange girl, like no girl he’d known (but what girls had he known?) but not a cunning one. If she said she liked him, then she did. Gird cleared his throat.

“I would like to—” Lady’s grace; he didn’t even know how to ask. But Mali had moved nearer to him again, her shoulder against his, her fragrant hair once more against his face.

“You should wait until sunrise,” she said. “You might change your mind.”

Gird laughed. “Sunrise,” he said, “is too far away. Or do you want to go back and find witnesses to make it formal?”

“I want no witnesses,” she said, in a low voice that was almost a growl. “Not for this.” She folded her shawl, and lay back upon it, arms wide. “I swear by the Lady, that for this night I am content.”

And content were they both by sunrise. Gird had thought he knew how it went between men and women; it was no secret after all, and any child saw it often enough growing up. But Mali’s body, sweet-scented and warm on the cool hillside grass, was nothing like his imaginings—or far more. He could not get enough of touching her smooth skin, her many complex curves all ending in another place to enjoy with tongue and nose and fingers. And she, by all evidence, enjoyed it all as much as he did. They had fallen asleep at last, to be wakened by the loud uneven singing of Gird’s friends on their way home. Mali chuckled.

“They want to let you know it’s time to go, but without interrupting. You know, Gird, they are your friends. You must forgive them someday.”

Right then he would have forgiven anyone anything, or so he felt, A pale streak marked distant sunrise. With a groan, he pulled his clothes together. “I don’t want to leave.”

Mali was already standing, shaking out her shawl. “If you wish, you know where.”

“You know I want to marry you.”

“I do not know. I know you enjoyed my body, and I enjoyed yours, but there’s more to marriage than that. But I like you, Gird. I say that now, after hearing you sing, laugh, and cry—more than many girls do, before they wed. Look on my face in daylight, and decide.” She turned away to start home. Gird caught her arm.

“Why not now?”

“What of your work today? What of your family? Go home, lo—Gird. Go home and think whether you want a big, clumsy, loud-voiced wife with a scarred face. If you do, come see me in daylight. Ask me then—”

“I’m asking now!”

“No. I’ll not answer now. Daylight for both of us then.” And she pulled away and was gone. Gird stared after her, then followed the distant voices of his friends toward home.

He caught up with them within sight of home. By then it was light enough to see their expressions; he could feel himself going red. Amis elbowed Jens.

“You see I was right. He just needed to get a little fresh air—”

“He got more than fresh air, I’ll warrant. Look at his face. If I’d gone out like that with Torin—”

“You wouldn’t. You’ll be learning how in your marriage bed, Jens.”

“I know how.” Jens shoved Koris, who shoved back. “It’s just that with her father—”

“Come on, Gird,” said Amis, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “Tell us—you drag the girl out in the middle of the dancing, did you just throw her on the ground, or what?”

He could hear the undertones in their voices—they weren’t sure if he was going to be angry, or sulk, or what. He felt like singing, and instead burst out laughing.

“That’s new,” said Amis. “I like that—Gird laughing again.”

“Be still,” he said, ducking away from Amis’s arm and the finger that was prodding his ribs. “You were right: I admit it. I needed to go dancing—”

“You didn’t dance,” said Jens.

Gird shrugged. He could feel more laughter bubbling up, like a spring long dry coming in. “I did well enough,” he said.

“Watch him go to sleep behind the hedges today.” Koris grinned, but it had no bite to it. “You may be tired by nightfall, eh?”

Gird grinned back. He felt that the bad years had never happened; he felt he could work for two days together. He drew a long breath—sweet, fresh air of dawn—and said nothing more. He had never expected to be happy again, and now he was.

He came in through the barton, aware of the stale, sour smell of the cottage after the freshness outside. All very well to fall for a girl, to marry her—but where would they sleep? He’d have to build a bed. He’d have to earn the marriage fee for the count, and the fee to her family for her parrion. He’d have to—

“You’re looking blithe this morning,” said Arin, from the flank of the red cow. Milk hissed into the bucket. Arin’s voice had sharpened, in the difficult years, but he sounded more worried than angry.

“Sheepfold last night,” said Gird. He took down the other milking stool, and a bucket.

“You? I thought you’d gone to Kirif’s.”

Gird washed the cow’s udder with water from the stable bucket and folded himself up on the milking stool. The brindle cow flapped her ears back and forth as he reached for her teats, and he leaned into her flank and crooned to her. “Easy, sweetling—I was at Kirif’s first, and then Amis came along and we went over to the fold—”

“Good for you,” said Arin. “Meet anyone?”

He might as well admit it; it would be all over the village by the time they came to the field. “You always meet someone at the fold,” he began, but he couldn’t hold the tone. “Someone,” he said again. “Arin, there’s a girl from Fireoak—”

“Where?”

“Fireoak. Sunrising of here. You know, Teris’s wife’s sister married into Fireoak. And her parrion is cooking and herblore—”

“Teris’s wife’s sister?” said Arin, with maddening coolness.

“No. Mali’s parrion. The girl I met.”

Arin’s eyebrows went up. “You were talking parrions? In one night?”

“We did more than talk,” said Gird, stripping the first two teats and going on to the next.

“You can’t mean—you’re not betrothed? Gird, you know you have to ask—”

Gird grinned into the cow’s flank and squirted a stream of milk at Arin, who had come to stand by her hip. “Not betrothed, but more than talk. Lady’s grace, Arin, you know what I mean. And I will ask for her, just you wait.”

“But are you sure? The first time you’ve been out with the lasses since before—” he stopped short, and reddened. Gird laughed.

“Since before I left the guards, you mean, and you’re right. So you think it’s like a blind man’s first vision, and I should wait and see? So she said, but I tell you, Arin, this is my wife. You’ll like her.”

“I hope so,” said Arin soberly. “Best tell Da.”

“After milking.” He finished the brindle cow, and took both buckets into the kitchen.

His mother gave him one look and said “Who?” Gird looked at her. “Is it so obvious?”

“To a woman and a wife? Did you think I was blind, lad? No, you’re a lad no more. Man, then. You’ve found a woman, and bedded her, and now you want to marry.”

“True, then. What d’you think?”

She looked at him, a long measuring look. “About time, I think. If you’re ready. You’ve spent long enough sulking—”

“I know,” he said, to forestall what was coming. She shook her head at him, but didn’t continue the familiar lecture.

“Well, then—I don’t know where the fee’s coming from, but you can earn that. What’s her parrion?”

“Herbcraft and cooking.” He held his breath; his mother had always talked of finding a wife with a parrion to complement hers: another weaver or spinner, perhaps a dyer.

“Well enough. No lad—man—takes advice of his mother, but you think now, Gird—is she quarrelsome? The house will be no larger for cross words.” That was said low; Arin’s wife was still in the other room, and she had brought, his mother had said once, a parrion of complaining.

“Not—quarrelsome.” She had said she was freespoken, but nothing in her voice had sent the rasp along his skin.

“Best tell your father.” She gave him a quick smile. “If she’s brought you laughter again, Gird, I’ll give her no trouble. It’s been a long drought.”

His father, still hunched over his breakfast, brightened when Gird told him. Arin’s wife said nothing, briskly leading her oldest out the front door. His father leaned close.

“Comely, is she?”

“She’s—” Gird could not think of words. She had been starlight and scent, warmth and strength and joy, all wrapped in one. “She’s strong,” he offered. His father laughed.

“You sound like the lad you were. Strong didn’t give that gleam to your eye, I’ll warrant. There’s more to the lass than muscle. When will you go to her father?”

“Soon. I—I’m not sure.”

His father whistled the chorus of “Nutting in the Woods” and laughed again. “Young men. By the gods, boy, I remember your mother—” Gird was shocked. His mother had been his mother—that capable, hard-handed woman in long apron, spooning out porridge or carding wool or weaving—all his life. His father had gone on. “Hair in a cloud of light around her face, and she smelled like—like—I suppose all girls do, in their spring. Never a young lad can resist that, Gird; we all go that way, rams to the ewes and bulls to the cows, and spend the rest of our days yoked in harness—but it’s times like this make it worthwhile.”

“Eh?” He had not followed all that; his father’s words brought back Mali’s scent, as if she stood next to him, as if she lay—and he pulled his mind back with an effort.

His father thumped the table. “To see sons ready to wed themselves, strong sons: that’s what’s worth the work, Gird. To see you with your eyes clear and your mind on something but the past.”

Gird shrugged. The self of yesterday, the self that had had nothing to hope for, was gone as if it had never lived.

“ ’Tis the Lady’s power,” said his father. “She can bring spring to any field.” This no longer embarrassed Gird; he had returned whole-hearted to his family’s beliefs.

His visit to Fireoak began auspiciously. Mali’s own mother had seen his mother’s weaving at the tradefair years before.

“She has the parrion for the firtree pattern,” the woman said. She was as tall as Mali, but spare, her dark hair streaked with gray. “If she has not the parrion for the barley pattern, I would be glad to trade.” Gird knew that his mother had wanted the barley pattern for years, and had never been able to work it out herself. She had bestowed the firtree pattern on Arin’s wife’s aunt; surely she would trade with his wife’s mother. He nodded: no commitment, but possibility.

Mali herself was kneading bread, her arms flour-smudged to the elbows. The scar she’d told him of was obvious enough, along the right cheek, more broad than deep. He didn’t care; he had known he would not care. It was hard to be that close to her, in the same air, and not holding her. Her eyes twinkled at him: agreement. Then she looked back at the bread dough and pummeled it again. He could feel once more her fist on his arm, the strength of her. She was strong inside and out; his knees weakened as he remembered the feel of her body all along his on the starlit grass.

“Mali’s not the quietest girl,” said Mali’s father. He was not so dark as Mali and her mother, a brown square man with a graying beard, almost bald. “She’s got a quick tongue.”

“Gird knows that,” said Mali, flipping the dough and slamming it down again.

“Like that,” said her father. Gird smiled at him.

“Better a quick tongue than one full of malice,” he said, misquoting the old proverb on purpose.

“Oh, aye, if it’s not quick into the pot. Good cook; her parrion’s valuable.” That began the bargaining phase. A daughter’s parrion was a family’s most valuable possession, the secrets and inherited talent of generations of women passed to a chosen carrier. A valuable parrion enriched the household gaining it, and impoverished those left behind. The lords’ fee for marriage was the same for all of the same rank, but he would owe Mali’s family for her parrion.

At least it meant that her family found his acceptable, and she must have agreed as well. Despite all the lords had done, the people had never come over to thinking that girls had to go where their families bestowed them. Marriage was, in the old rituals, the mingling of fires on a hearth—and if either failed to kindle, the marriage could not be.

Arin had come along for the bargaining phase, since Gird was neither holder nor heir. Gird and Mali escaped to the smallgarden, there to stand awkwardly staring at each other, in full view of her village. An amazing number of people seemed to need to go back and forth in the lane. Gird knew none of them, but noticed the same small boys driving the same goats up and down, a girl in a red skirt carrying a basket—full, then empty, then full again—past the gate. Mali finally began to laugh.

“It’s true—they’re just seeing how long we can stand here, and expecting one of us to turn tail and run.”

“The scar doesn’t matter.” The words were out before he thought; she flushed and it showed whiter. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“No—I’m used to it. I thought you’d come anyway, and I thought you’d still—but I’m blushing because it’s my fault.”

“Fault?”

She looked away past his shoulder. “I had heard of you; I went there to meet you, and no one else. And meeting you, I wanted you—and then—”

“And then I wanted you. So?”

“So—I still want you, but—don’t bring it back to me, years from now.”

“No.” He moved closer to her, ignoring the women now carrying buckets past on their way to the well. “No, it was meant. The Lady meant it, maybe, or some other god.” He put his arm around her waist, and she leaned on him. He could have carried her off to the barton, then and there, but Arin came out looking pleased.

“So—we have work to do, Gird, to earn your fees.”

He knew he had turned red; he could feel the heat on his face. “Ah—yes. Mali—”

“Don’t tarry,” she said. Then she leaned against him again, and kissed him, and whispered in his ear. “We may have a Lady’s blessing already.”

Chapter Six

The only awkwardness came when he had to bring Mali before the count’s steward, to have her transferred on the Rolls. Luckily the count himself was not in residence, but the steward might have decided to invoke the rule himself.

“So—you’re marrying, young Gird?”

“Yes, lord steward.” Gird kept his eyes down.

“About time—you’ve loafed long enough.” The voice was chilly; Gird watched the fingers holding the pen tap on the edge of the parchment. “Look up at me, boy.”

The steward’s face was older, grayer, but otherwise unchanged. Gird met those ice-blue eyes with difficulty.

“You brought the marriage fee?” Gird handed it over, the heavy copper coins slipping out of his hands much faster than they’d come in. “And this is the girl—” The steward looked her up and down, and then glanced at Gird. “You chose strength, eh? A good worker, I’ll be bound—none too pretty—” Gird felt his ears burning; Mali’s face had gone mottled red. Her scar stood out, stark white, from brow to jawline. “Wide hips—good bearer. Any mageblood in your line, girl?”

“No, lord steward.” Her voice was husky, almost a growl.

“No, I daresay not. Nor would breed mages, is my guess. Waste of his lordship’s time, your sort, bar the fun of it.” The steward looked back down at the parchment. “Mali of Fireoak, daughter of Kekrin, son of Amis, wed to Gird of this village, son of Dorthan, son of Keris. Fee paid, permission granted to farm with Dorthan. That’s all then.”

They ducked their heads and went out quickly, both of them flushed and angry, but too wise to speak of it. First to Gird’s father’s house, for Mali to lay her first fire on the greathearth; every old grannie in the village was there to cry the portents of that flame. Gird held his breath. She put the splinters down in the Star pattern, and above them the tripod of fireoak, brought from her own family’s hearth, and then struck the flints. Once—would have been too soon. Twice—a fair omen, but not the best. On the third strike, a spark leapt from her tools to the tip of the fireoak splinters, and kindled living flame. Now she moved quickly, laying the rest of the fire in ritual patterns: this twig over that, this herb, a twist of wool from her father’s sheep, an apple-seed from their tree. The grannies muttered and flashed handsigns at each other; Gird was worried, but his mother smiled happily. It must be all right, then.

He and the other men left then, trudging through the back kitchen, then the cowbyre, into the narrow, cramped barton where the women had laid out the wedding feast on planks. This would be the refusing, he knew: Mali’s parents would come, and try to persuade her to go home. She would first refuse them, with the door open, then—when they argued longer—close and bar the door to them. After a ritual greeting to her mother-in-law, and a prick of the finger to get two drops of blood, one for the fire and one for the hearthstone, her parents would knock again. And now, as a member of this household, she would greet them as honored guests.

All this time, Gird endured the jokes of his friends and his brothers and father. He had heard such jokes all his life, finding them funny once he was old enough, but now, waiting for Mali to become his wife, and not her parents’ daughter, he was not amused. What did these grotesque fantasies have to do with Mali? He swiped irritably at his brother, when Arin tried to tie the traditional apron on him.

“You have to, Gird. You’re her husband now; don’t you want children?”

Gird looked at the apron, its ancient leather darkened by generations of celebrants. It was ridiculous. Bulls didn’t need such a thing; why did the gods demand it of humans? He could remember sniggering in the corner when Arin danced in the apron, and wondering how his brother could approach his wife in his own skin afterwards. His friends had come nearer, warily, ready to help Arin force him into it if necessary. He sighed, and let his arms fall.

“All right. But I still think—” He said no more; their hands were busy with thongs and lacings. “I wonder how old this custom is—”

Mali, when she came out, bit her lip to keep from laughing. At least, he hoped that was suppressed laughter on her face. He felt a fool enough, strutting around like a young bull first meeting heifers, and nearly as big. She wore the maiden’s vest of soft doeskin embroidered with flowers, laced tightly behind, where she could not reach it, a tradition as old as his apron. The men began to stamp the beat, their deep voices echoing off the barton walls as they chanted. Gird stamped as hard, feeling his face redden, hating it—but the old rhythm began to move him.

The steps were only partly traditional: part was each new-married man’s invention. The jiggling thing on the apron was ridiculous, yes—but it was not merely ridiculous. Gird strutted the length of the barton, whirled, skipped a step, backed—and closed on Mali. Her eyes were bright, twinkling with laughter; she glanced down, pretended shock, looked skyward and reeled backwards, to catch herself with a clutch at Gird’s shoulder. The watchers howled. She snatched her hand back, a maiden caught in indiscretion, and turned away. Gird circled her, faced her again, put his hands behind his back and waggled his hips. For an instant she grinned delightedly, then covered her face with her hands, brushed past him close enough for her skirts to catch on the apron, and then leaped like a startled deer.

Clearly, the dance was not embarrassing Mali—she played into the jokes as heartily as most men. Gird took heart, then. They could make their families laugh—their private joke, if their red faces came from exertion, and not from the shouts and laughter of others. They spun it out, circling and dodging between others and the tables, playing parts they only half understood. When they were both dripping sweat, Gird gave her a little nod, and his next rush carried them both into the cowbyre, where a stall had been laid with fresh straw for this occasion.

Here she had to unlace his apron, and he to unlace the maiden’s vest she wore, to replace it with the matron’s looser vest, his wedding present to her. Her fingers on his legs, his waist, brushed tantalizingly; the apron would be hardly more obvious than his response if she didn’t hurry. He fumbled with the vest lacings.

“Did they have to lace it so tightly?”

“That was my sister,” said Mali, breathless. “She wanted to see me faint, I think. Don’t break the laces, remember.” If he broke the laces, they’d have to give her family a sheep. He grunted and worked carefully. Finally the last knot came loose, and Mali drew a deep breath. “Ahh. Better.” She worked her arms out of the vest carefully, and turned to him.

Gird handed her the matron’s vest his mother and sisters had made. “You’d best get this on, if you don’t want to spend the rest of the feast in here.”

Mali chuckled as she looked him up and down. “Eager, are you?” She twitched her shoulders, putting the vest on, and Gird felt his pulse quicken. “But we’d better hang these out, or they’ll come in to help.”

“I’ll do it,” said Gird, The apron and vest had to be returned to each family, and the first step was to hang them on the appropriate pegs outside the cowbyre. A roar greeted him as he came out and put them up. Two of his friends were ready to grab him and keep him out, but he was quicker and managed to dart back into the stall with Mali.

Someone outside began another song, in which the women joined as well. Mali hummed the melody, and sat swaying a little back and forth. Gird stared at her. He wanted her—wanted her even more than on a hillside in the dark—but on the other side of the wall the whole village was waiting for this. It was one thing to be roused by someone else’s marriage rites, he was discovering, and quite another to fulfill all the rituals with everyone watching him. Or not exactly watching, but not indifferent, either.

Then Mali turned away, and burrowed into the straw. Gird watched, bemused. There was nothing in this stall; he’d cleaned it himself, that morning, and laid the clean straw carefully. Mali grunted, and came up with a stoppered jug and something wrapped in a cloth.

“You are a witch.” Gird pulled the stopper out when Mali passed him the jug. He sniffed. “What’s this?”

“My aunt’s favorite. And I’m not a witch, but you don’t know all the rituals. Groom prepares the stall, but the bride bribes her new mother-in-law to supply it.”

Gird sipped cautiously; a fiery liquid ran down his throat and made him blink. “Lady’s blessing—that would bring—”

“Trouble if the lords knew of it.” Mali took a swig, and opened her eyes. “My. No wonder she wouldn’t let me taste it before.” She unwrapped the cloth, and Gird saw a half-loaf of bread and some cheese. They ate quietly for the rest of that song, and the beginning of the next. Then either Mali’s aunt’s potion or Mali herself—warm and spicesmelling beside him—drove out his lingering embarrassment. He rolled toward her on the clean straw, and she embraced him. It was as satisfying as the first time, even when he roused to the ring of faces peering down at them.

“You went to sleep,” Amis said, grinning. “We could hear you snore all through the singing.”

Gird looked past them at the opening; it was nearly dark. Mali, her skirts back down around her knees, started rebraiding her hair. When he looked at her, she winked, and wrinkled her nose. “Well,” he said, “did you eat all the food, or can we have some?”

They had to lead more dancing, that night, in the final Weaving that took them in and out of every cottage in the village, and around all three wells. Then at last it was over: all the food eaten, all the songs sung, all the dances danced, and a few hours to sleep (this time only sleep) until dawn brought work and their first day as a married pair.

Despite his mother’s approval, Gird had worried about Mali’s quick tongue in the house, when she had to share that cramped kitchen with two other women and the children. His mother’s health had begun to fail; she was querulous sometimes, and Arin’s wife could never weave to suit her. But Mali left the loom alone, and took over all the kitchen work. The other two had no more scouring and scrubbing to do, no more washing of pots or kneading of dough. Gird had never known how much difference a parrion for cooking could make. All women cooked, and many men; food was food. Now he realized that food differed as much as weaving. Mali’s bread was lighter, her stews more savory, her porridge smooth, neither lumpy nor thin. She gathered herbs in the wood, and hung them to dry; they gave the cottage a different, sharper smell. She even knew how to make cheese.

With no kitchen work to do, Gird’s mother could concentrate on weaving, and let Arin’s wife do all the carding and spinning. They traded Mali’s cheese for extra wool; his mother sent three furls to the trading fair in the next village, which brought them precious coppers, almost as much as the marriage fee even that first year. Gird’s mother had always liked weaving better than anything else. Now she produced furl after furl, trading to the dyer for skeins of colored yarn, rich golds and reds and dark green. With those, she could weave patterned cloth that brought a higher price, combining the barley pattern Mali’s mother had taught her with color.

The other cheesemaker in the village was getting old, and people began to bring Mali milk. She traded herbs to the older cheese-maker for one of her tubs, and made more cheese. For every five, a hand, she could keep one. Her cheese was not as good as some, she admitted—she would not try to sell it at a tradefair—but in the village it brought them what they needed to feed the extra mouths.

Gird’s first child was born just after Midwinter. Mali had gathered the herbs she said she needed back in the summer, and as usual the village grannies came to help with the birthing. Gird had not realized how much his status would improve, first as a married man, and then as a father. Now all the grown men spoke to him by his own name. In the rest breaks they would wait for him before starting a conversation. Teris, who had been married more than a year, now treated him as an equal, an old friend. For a few days he resisted this, remembering Teris’s accusations. One bleak day when they were both in the cowbyre, Mali wormed the old quarrel out of him, and counseled forgiveness.

“You can’t change the past, love. If he’s a good friend now, why not?”

Gird found that his old grudge looked very different when he got it out and tried to explain it to Mali. “You make everything so simple,” he complained.

“It’s not simple, but it’s over. He erred, back then—did you never err?”

“You know I did, but—”

“Well, then, let be. He blamed you unfairly; if you refuse his friendship now, you’ll be blaming unfairly.”

“Are you ever angry?” He looked down at her; she had the baby at her breast, and he could smell her milk and the baby’s scent overlaying her own.

Mali knotted her brows, thinking. “Angry . . . yes. When things happen, not later. If I’d been here, and seen someone hurting you, then I’d have been angry. Otherwise—’tis like a bit of old milk in the pan that sours the new. All life would sour if we held anger. So I yell, and throw things, and scour it all away, right then, so the next day won’t sour.”

“But when things aren’t right—”

Mali shifted the baby to the other breast; he noticed how the baby’s sucking had changed the shape of her nipple before she pulled her vest across to cover it. “Is this about Teris, or something else?”

Gird chuckled; he wasn’t sure why. “Something you said that first night. And talking with the men in the village council. Things have changed since my father was a young man, and more since his father’s day. And not for the better.”

“Taxes?” Taxes were up again, the field-fee higher for the third year in a row.

“Not only that.” Gird rolled on his back and tried to think. “The law itself has changed. Old Keris was telling us yesterday about the way it was back then. No guards here, for one thing, and fewer everywhere. No lockups. No stocks, no whippings.”

“Old men always think their youth was golden,” said Mali, stroking the baby’s back.

“He saw the lords’ magic himself, he said.” Gird looked for a reaction to that and got it; Mali stared at him, shocked that he would speak of it openly. “He said they used to show it all the time, use it for aid in drought and storm.”

“What was it like?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“He saw them call rain, he said. Bring clouds out of a clear sky, gather them up as a shearer gathers the tags of fleece, and then call rain down.” Gird cleared his throat and looked around. No one else was in hearing. “He said, too, that the old lords would warm the heart to see, not like our count. That everyone wanted to please them.”

“Old men’s tales,” said Mali, but without conviction.

That year the spring rains came timely, and a rich harvest rewarded their labors. Arin’s wife had another baby in the fall; by Midwinter, Mali told him she was pregnant again. The cottage seemed to bulge at the seams already . . .

The dun cow lowed, her hoarse voice as loud as if she’d been in the cottage. No, she seemed to cry. No, no, no . . . o . . . o. Gird palmed his burning eyes and wanted to groan a refrain to it. No. He was not ready to get up and help that cow; he wanted to lie where he was and sleep. But the cow was not giving up; with the stubborn insistence of a deprived bovine, she let out another long plaint. Most cows tried to edge furtively into the woods when about to calve, but this one wanted someone there . . . yet refused to do it where it was convenient. Gird rolled on his back, grunting at the ache in his shoulders from plowing, and slowly sat up. He heard his father’s harsh breathing, the catch in every inhalation. One of the children snored: probably Rahel. The cow called again, this time answered by the two in the cowbyre. Gird stifled an oath, and sat up, feeling around on the floor for his boots.

Outside, the predawn light in the sky only made the barton itself darker. Gird carried a splinter of oak from the fire, its tip bright orange, almost flaming in the breeze of his movement. Tucked in his tunic was the scrap of candle he’d light if he needed it when the time came: no use to waste candle if daylight came before the crisis. The dun cow had stayed out of the byre last night, as she did every time she calved. She would be in the thicket near the creek, if he was lucky. Outside the barton, the lower meadow looked silver-gray under a sky sheened with dawn. Heavy spring dew wet his boots through before he came to the thicket, guided more by the cow’s voice than his sight, though it grew lighter moment by moment.

In among the gnarled and twisted scrub, though, he could barely see, and staggered more than once over root or stone. Stupid cow, he thought, as he had thought for three years now. Staying out in the cold and dark, hiding yourself in the thicket, when you know you’ll want my help. There she was, a large hump of shadow among lighter, flickering shadows. Down already, grunting and panting, her tail thrown back out of her way. He pulled out the candle, found a smooth stone to set it on, and with a wisp of dry grass and breath, blew the splinter into a flame. The cow’s big eyes reflected it, making three flames where there had been one. For a moment his mind wandered: did the cow see a reflection of flame in his eyes? Was that why she looked afraid? He lit the candle, picked it up, and walked closer, crooning to the nervous cow. Have a heifer, he begged silently. Have a heifer this time. A contraction moved across her girth; a bulge extruded below her tail. A pearly blot inside . . . a hoof. That was good, unless the other leg was back. He couldn’t quite see. Another contraction, and he could: two hoofs and a nose. A normal delivery, so far, with the shiny black nose already free of the sack. Now it was light enough to see the shapes he needed to see. He tipped the candle, quenching it against the damp grass with a hiss, and tucked it back into his tunic. His feet were cold. The cow groaned again, a softer sound but eloquent of struggle. Gird stroked her flank, and began the calving chant.

“So, cow, gentle cow, quiet cow, so . . . Birth calf, milk calf, little calf grow . . . so cow, kind cow, good cow, so . . . Life come, growth come . . .”

Another contraction, and another, this one longer, pushing the shoulders out. The shoulders came, all in a rush, as always, and the wet calf lay still a moment, hind end still in the cow. Then the rest of the body followed. The cow made a noise Gird never heard save in those moments after calving, almost a murmur. The calf’s ear flicked. With a lumbering rush, the cow heaved herself up, and the cord broke. She shook her head at Gird, who went on chanting until the wildness left her eyes. The cow nosed around the calf, licking it clean of the birth sac, licking it dry, murmuring, encouraging. The dun cow was a good mother cow. The calf shook its head, waggling both ears, and tapped its tiny front hooves on the ground as it tried to figure out how to stand. The cow licked on, still murmuring. The calf pushed one front leg out, then another, and heaved itself to a sitting position, then fell over. But it tried again, and again, its ridiculous little ears flicking back and forth with each effort. And it was a heifer, the year’s good luck, for he could keep it.

Gird was never sure what made him look away from the calf, to glance between the knotted limbs of creek plum and hazel, but there across the meadow walked a creature of grace and light. Tall, lithe, so inexpressibly lovely that his throat closed. What was it?

The creature turned, as if feeling his glance, and looked toward him. A voice came, bell-like but slightly discordant.

“And what are you thinking, human, alone before dawn on this unlucky day?”

Gird could find nothing to say, only then remembering that it was the spring Evener, the day and night of equal length, when the creatures of night ruled until truedawn, and the creatures of day could not wander the dusks unscathed.

“The cow called,” he said finally. The black-cloaked figure came nearer, hardly seeming to touch the ground.

“The cow called. Cattle to cattle: as your masters would say of you. Less than cattle, we think you, worse.”

He could see the face now, inhuman but beautiful with a beauty that called human hearts and eyes. Pale against the black cloak, wide eyes starry bright. Was this a treelord? He had heard tales of them but no one he knew had ever seen one.

“No, I am not one of those dreamsoaked lost singers,” the figure said. Gird shivered. He had said nothing; it had picked the thought out of his mind. “I am what they were, and should have stayed, had they any pride or wit at all. Your kind, when they know us at all, call us kuaknom.”

He had never heard that word. Kuak, that was the old word for tree—and the nomi were the windspirits that hated order and served chaos. Kuaknom: that would be—

“Old lords,” said the being, now just outside the thicket. “Very old, human slave. Firstborn of the elder races, lords of power and darkness—”

“The fallen treelords,” Gird said, having finally put it all together. The treelords who had quarreled with Adyan the Maker, so the tales went, and turned against their kin, and riven the forests that used to cover the land in a great battle.

“Not fallen, little man,” said the kuaknom, with a smile that sent ice to Gird’s heart. “Not fallen—but changed. And on this night, until truedawn, those witless enough to wander abroad are our lawful prey. You, little man—”

Gird flinched as the kuaknom reached for him. The cow grumbled, in the way of new mother cows, and rattled her horns against the hazels. And a shaft of red sunlight, sharp as an arrow, stung his eyes; he flung up his hand, and the kuaknom backed away, muttering in its own language. Then again, to him:

“You are safe, human, by that one gleam of sun, but I curse you for it. May your loins wither, and your beasts fall sick, and the strength of your arm fail when you need it most.” Even as Gird squinted against the sunlight, it was gone, a shadow across the field.

He sat a long time, bemused, until he heard Raheli’s shrill voice calling for him. Was such a curse dangerous? Would he die, lose his manhood, his cattle, his strength? The cow continued to groom and nurse the calf, who showed all the sturdy life of a healthy young bovine.

Nothing befell to make him think the curse had force until the following winter. He had consoled himself that it was, after all, delivered in sunlight, which ought to make the words of the dark powerless. He had given more than his usual share to the rituals of Alyanya and even contributed freely to the lords’ offering to Esea. Esea was, after all, a god of light, who might be expected to offer protection against the powers of darkness. When the rest of the year went well (the other two cows also calving heifers), he counted himself lucky.

But that was the winter of the wolves, the worst that had been seen since Gird’s childhood. It began even before Midwinter. They had heard the wolves howling night after night, but none of the stock had yet been touched. The headman had gone to the steward, asking the guards’ help to hunt the pack, but the steward had refused. Some of the men had gone out to the more distant folds, to help the shepherds watch. Arin went, over his mother’s objections, twirling his long staff and grinning at Gird as he walked away.

Gird was hauling dung to the pile when he heard the shouts. He hauled himself to the top of the barton wall. There they came, across the snow, a cluster of men moving awkwardly. Carrying something—no, someone—he slid down, and went through the cottage without stopping to speak. His father was already out in the lane. Together they moved toward the group—and then he could see it was Arin they carried, Arin whose blood stained his clothes and dripped scarlet on the snow.

They got him into the house and stretched on the table. Gird felt his own heart pounding, slow but shaking his whole body, as he saw Arin’s wounds. Then his mother pushed him aside.

“Go fetch water,” she said. And to Arin’s wife, “Get those children out of here—into the kitchen—”

Gird went out to the well; the men stood around silently, shoulders hunched against the cold. He lowered the bucket into icy black water and drew it up. As he turned to carry it in, Amis turned to him. “Is he—?”

Gird shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Kefs gone for the steward,” Amis said. Gird nodded and went back inside with the bucket. Coming in the clean air, he could smell the blood as if it were a slaughterday. He gave the bucket to Mali, who reached for it, and went to stand behind his father.

Arin had long bleeding gashes on his legs and arms; one hand was badly mangled. “He was trying to choke one of them with it,” offered Cob, one of the men who had carried him in. Gird’s mother said nothing; she and Mali were cleaning the wounds with one of Mali’s brews, and wrapping them with the cloths the women kept. Arin looked as white as the snow outside against the dark wood of the table; he did not move or speak. “He bled all the way back,” said Cob, into the silence.

Gird’s mother gave him a fierce look. “You might have tied these up then,” she said.

Cob spread his hands. “We had nothing but our dirty clothes; I would not give him woundfever.”

Gird’s mother opened her mouth and shut it with a snap. Gird could imagine what she would have said to him. But Cob had done the best he knew, and Cob was not her son.

The door opened, and someone coughed. Gird turned. The steward was there. No one said anything; the steward came nearer. In the dim light his face was stern as usual, but Gird thought his eyes softened when he saw Arin’s wounds.

“Wolves, or folokai?” he asked.

“Wolves, sir,” said Cob. “At the sheepfold, they were, and Arin come to drive them off—”

“Alone?” asked the steward.

“No, sir. But he went first, and it seemed the wolf drew away—just the one, that we could see. He went to chase it a bit, and that’s when the pack ran at him, and then the rest of us ran out with torches, and drove them off him.”

The steward moved closer yet. Gird’s mother put out a hand, as if to stop him, and drew it back. The steward laid his hands on Arin’s shoulders.

“Heal him, sir?” asked Gird’s mother in a choked whisper.

The steward looked startled, then shook his head. “No, I can’t do that—I have not the power.” He looked closely at Arin’s wounds. “I doubt he’ll live—he looks to have lost too much blood—”

“No!” Gird’s mother grabbed at his sleeve. Gird felt his heart contract with pity for her and Arin both. “It’s not fair—he alone against the wolves—”

The steward pulled free. “I’m sorry. It’s a shame—I’ll take his name off the work rolls—if he lives, he’ll be unfit to work until well into summer. If he dies, I’ll remit half the death fee; he deserves that much.”

“And more,” someone muttered behind Gird. The steward’s head came around, but the mutter had been too low to identify. Even Gird had no idea who it was.

“And I’m sending down a sheep,” said the steward. “He will need meat broth to mend, if he can.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Gird’s father. His mother nodded. The steward glanced around the room, as if looking for an excuse to say something else. His gaze lit on Gird.

“At least you have another son, a strong one. And this one—Arin, is it?—has sired already, hasn’t he?”

A wave of hot fury rolled over Gird. He knew the lords considered them cattle, but the steward rarely made it so clear. Arin had bred; Arin’s children lived; Arin himself—the laughing, steadfast, honest brother who had saved his own life more than once—that Arin did not matter to the steward, and even less to the lord who ruled the steward. He himself was just another bullcalf; if he died, the steward would shrug as easily. By the time he’d mastered his anger, the steward had left, and the other men not of the family. Gird’s oldest living brother, a cottager in his own holding, had come; he and Gird stood beside the table.

Arin opened his eyes and stared vacantly at the ceiling for a moment. Then his eyes roved until he met his mother’s. “Lady bless you,” he said. “This is home?”

“Home,” she said. “We’ll soon have you well . . .”

“Not so soon.” His voice was so weak Gird could hardly hear it. “If I die—”

“You will not die!” Arin’s wife had come back in, and clasped his hand.

“If—you will take care of the children?” He looked at Gird, not his older brother or father, and Gird answered, feeling in an instant the weight on his shoulders.

“I will, as my own.”

“Good. The wolf—I was—frightened.” His eyes sagged shut, and his head rolled sideways.

It was late that night before he spoke again. By then the sheep had come, a carcass already cleaned, and Mali had a broth cooking, rich with herbs as well as meat. By then, too, they knew the old tracker and the guards had already gone after the wolves. Too late, Gird thought bitterly. But he held his tongue. Arin roused briefly, asked for water. He could not lift his head to drink; Gird put an arm under his shoulders and lifted him. He could feel the heat through his shirt. Was it a good sign, that Arin was warm again, or a bad sign of woundfever? He didn’t know. He felt the trembling of Arin’s muscles as he drank; when his mother had wiped Arin’s mouth, Gird let him down as gently as he could, and pulled the blanket straight. Arin’s eyes were bright, but not quite focused.

“Issa?” His wife moved up and took his good hand. “I will try, but—I am afraid the wolves have done for me.”

“No—” she breathed.

“Yes. You will have a place here. Gird will take care of you.”

“Arin—” began his father. Arin interrupted him, talking in broken phrases, without heeding any of them.

“I saw—a place—the Lady’s garden. Flowers in the snow. Gird. Little brother—remember what I said.”

“Yes, Arin,” said Gird. He had no idea which of the things Arin had said over the years had come to him now, but he would forget none of them.

“You are more a soldier than you know. But don’t give up the Lady’s bounty, Gird.”

“I won’t.” His vision blurred, and he realized he was crying. It felt strange to be looking down at Arin. Arin’s eyes roved, and found his father’s.

“You—told me not to go—” he murmured. His father shrugged. Gird looked at him sharply. Could he say nothing? But the firelight glittered on the tears that ran down his face. Although tears were nothing unusual among the village men, Gird was still surprised. His father cried rarely; now his shoulders shook with silent sobs. “Don’t cry,” said Arin, quite clearly. “I chose, or the Lady chose my time—” He said nothing more; his eyes closed. Gird watched the blankets for the rise and fall of breath.

In the hours of watching that night, in the flickering firelight, as their words to each other gradually failed and all was silence but for the snoring of Arin’s oldest and the thin wail of Gird’s youngest when he woke hungry in the turn of night, Gird felt the weight of manhood settle on his shoulders. He looked from face to face, seeing in the exhaustion of his father’s the truth that he was now—must be now—the head of their family, in fact if not in law. Here, in this room: all that his father had made was now his to protect, support, defend.

When Mali had fed the baby, she came to sit beside him, her hand on his. He looked into her eyes, and saw her absolute confidence that he could do what he must, that they were safe with him. It was not true. He felt simultaneously the cold menace without, all that winter stood for, of famine, wolves, cold, even the lords’ ravaging taxes, and the cozy seeming security within. How could he stand between, one mortal man? Cold sweat came out on his face; he felt himself shiver as if someone had poured a bucket of icy water over him. Mali squeezed his hand. Her warmth, her strength leaned against him. He was not alone, then—there was another pair of arms, another strong back. Enough? It had to be enough. He could feel through his skin her awareness of his feelings, and her impossible joy that fought all his despair with laughter. His fear did not frighten her, nor his weakness weaken her.

Arin was still alive at dawn, when Gird and his father began the day’s work. Gird eyed his father, noticing what he had not before—how weak his father had become in the past few years. That great frame had bent; the broad hands that had frightened him were stiff, knobby with swollen joints. His bush of yellow hair had gone gray. Had this begun while Gird was sulking, before his marriage, Gird wondered? Not that it mattered; somehow his father had become an old man.

All that day, he thought about it while doing his work. Sim would not come back—some old quarrel that had been far over his head when he was a boy had sent Sim out to make his own way. Now that he had cothold, he would be a fool to give it up. And if Arin died—he hoped fiercely that Arin would not die, but knew that hope alone could not save him. If Arin died—when Arin died, since even if he lived through this he might die before Gird another way—Gird would have it all to care for. Arin’s wife Issa—the children—Mali—his own children now and to come—his parents. In the bleak light of that late-winter day he admitted to himself that his parents might not live long.

Arin lived another two days. He said nothing more that they could follow, although once the fever rose he muttered constantly, tossing and turning restlessly. He could not drink the broth Mali had made; Gird was almost ashamed to take a bowl of it, but they could not waste food. The sheep was already dead. They all drank quietly, avoiding each others’ eyes and trying not hear Arin’s moans.

Not long after Arin died, just after the first thaw, Gird’s father dropped suddenly one day, and lay twitching. By morning he, too, was dead. The steward came again, to value the cottage and the lord’s property therein. Gird had the death-fee to pay, part in coin and part in livestock—his precious heifers, two of them—and then the steward confirmed him in his father’s place, as “half-free tenant of this manor,” whose clothes and few personal tools might be handed down to his heir. The rest—the land, the cottage, the livestock, the major tools such as ox-yoke, plow, and scythe—were the lord’s and he was “allowed” to use them.

Chapter Seven

He loved the feel of the scythe, the oiled wood smooth under his hands, the long elegant curve ending in its shining blade. Facing the uncut grain, with the sun over his left shoulder throwing his shadow ahead of him, he paused for the first of the harvest prayers.

“Alyanya, gracious Lady, harvest-bringer . . .” That was the oldest reaper, away on the other end of the field, to his right.

“Lady of seed and shoot, Lady of flower and corn . . .” That was the oldest granny in the vill, holding a wreath of harvest-daisies high.

“As the seed sprouts, and the green leaf grows, as the flowers come, and the, seed swells . . .” And that was the Corn-maiden, who would wear the wreath while they reaped.

“So we with our blood offer, and you with your bounty reply . . .” All the reapers, their response ragged with distance, but sincere—and Gird with the others had nicked the heel of his palm with the scytheblade, and squeezed a drop of blood to flick on the ground. Then he smeared the rest on the blade itself, to return his strength to the cut grain. Garig, the headman, blew a mellow note on the cow’s horn, and the harvest began.

Gird swung back his scythe and swept it forward and around. The wheat fell away from his stroke, as if swept by a gust of wind. Step forward, swing, sweep . . . and another swathe turned aside for him. That old rhythm reclaimed him, required—so early in the day—hardly any effort. Step, swing, sweep, return. Step, swing, sweep, return. On one side the standing grain, and before him the diminishing row he worked, and on his left side the bright stalks lying with their heads on the short green grass. The ripe wheat gave up a smell almost as rich as bread baking. Beneath the stalks lay a secret world, tiny runs that showed as he worked his way along.

He looked up, to see his way, and realized he was nearly halfway. Pakel, the oldest reaper, was only a third along his row—but no one expected him to be fast, not at his age. Still, he moved as smoothly as ever, and Gird knew he would be working just that well at day’s end. Gird went on. Step, swing, sweep, return. Something flickered in the stalks ahead of him, and he smiled. So the little ones, the harvest mice, had realized their day was come? He took another stroke, and another. Another mousetail, just escaping his blade to leap deeper into the wheat.

Gird reached the end of his row long before Pakel was through. He stopped to whet his blade from the stone looped to his belt. Behind him, three men worked on the half-field he’d begun, in staggered rows, as three others followed Pakel. It was the custom to harvest in halves, all reapers in each half working the rows one way, to “fold the field” as it was said. Gird walked back up, outside the fallen grain, and took a pull from the water jug one of the women held. He didn’t need it yet, but it was wise to drink on every row. Then he began another row behind the last man on his half.

The little cut on his hand itched, as it always did. The sun was higher, and the smell of the ripe grain richer. A little breeze ruffled the wheatears and brought up the green smell of the haymeadows nearer the river. Step, swing, sweep, return. This was the best time of the harvest-day, when he had one swathe down, and his body had warmed and loosened to the work. The scythe swung and sliced almost on its own; his body was merely the pivot for its swing, leaving his mind free to wander. He enjoyed the evenness of his cuts, the smooth stubble he left behind, the proof of his skill. He saw every tiny blossom of the weeds within the grain: the starry blue illin, the delicate red siris, like drops of blood. Overhead arched a cloudless sky, a harvester’s boon, and out of it came the song of a kiriel, sweet and piercing. He felt the prickle of stubble on his feet, the sleeves of his shirt on his arms as they swung.

This—not the other—was the right use of his strength. He felt as if he could swing the scythe forever without tiring. Row after row, selion after selion, flowed away behind him. The sun’s heat, which a few years ago had worn him down by midday, now seemed to give him its energy. He remembered, as clearly as if it had been that morning, the first time he’d taken a scythe to swing. Arin’s scythe, that had been, and his first cuts down in the haymeadow had been ragged as if he’d ripped at the grass with his hands. Now Arin was three years dead, and he was the leading reaper, the strongest man in the village, able to provide for his own and his brothers’ children as well. He did not let himself think of the children who had died, his two eldest sons, one of Arin’s, in a fever. It might have been that kuaknom’s curse, or chance, but it was over.

He stopped to drink at the end of the row, and rubbed his hands together. He could just feel the pressure at the base of his thumbs from the grips; the right had shifted. He spat on the handle and worked the grip back and forth slightly. There. He tapped a splinter under the bindings to tighten it, and swung the scythe lightly to check . . . yes.

Across the field he could see Arin’s oldest lugging water up to the fieldmasters. Another selion or two, and it would be time for the noon break. He was not tired, but he was hungry, his belly reminding him how long it had been since that crust of bread before dawn. He could smell cooking food even over the rich smell of ripe grain around him. They were supposed to lunch on the lord’s bounty when harvesting the great field, but that bounty had been less each year. Back before Arin’s death, it had meant meat as well as bread, and barrels of ale. In his childhood he remembered harvest meals of roast meat, bread, cheese, and sweet cakes, heavy with honey and spices. Last year, bread and meat broth only; the men had grumbled, but what good did that do? The steward would not kill one of the lord’s sheep or cows for grumbling alone. He had not grumbled; he could not afford to, with two families to support. It did no good to become known as a grumbler. He’d eaten his bread and broth, taking an extra helping while others complained.

He looked ahead critically. They might finish the great field in two days, at this pace, and then begin the harvest of the individual strips. Would the weather hold? It had been a dry spring, and they’d all prayed for rain, but rain now would add nothing to the harvest.

At the noon meal, the steward handed out round dark loaves and bowls of thin soup. This year no one grumbled. Gird ate silently, steadily. The more he could take of the lord’s bounty, the better for his family. Arin’s boy, as a water carrier, could eat with the harvesters this year. He came to sit by Gird, a boy as quiet and shy as Arin had been cheerful and open. Gird wondered if seeing his father die had changed him—but he’d been a quiet baby, for all that.

“Mali’s coming out to bind,” said the boy—Fori, his name was, though they seldom called him by name. He was “Arin’s boy” to the whole village. Gird frowned.

“She should not: she’s too near her time.”

“Ma has the sickness,” said Fori, ducking his head. Gird sighed. Issa loathed fieldwork, and although she was not as good a weaver as his mother had been, she would spend all her time at the loom. Leaving all the other work for Mali, Gird thought—but she also had the sickness, no one could deny it. No one with the sickness could come into the harvest field; throwing up on the first day of harvest was the worst of bad luck. And it was no fault of Fori’s, what Issa did or did not do. But he worried about Mali. Big and strong as she was, every child seemed to take more out of her; she had not looked well this time.

“Make sure she has enough water,” said Gird. Fori nodded. He had not finished his bowl of soup, but sat dangling his hands.

“Eat! You take all you can get, lad.” The boy slurped up the rest of his soup.

“It’s not as good as Mali’s,” he said through a mouthful of bread.

“No, but Mali didn’t have to cook it. It’s not from our stores. When you’re doing the lord’s work, you feed from his bounty: that’s custom.”

Gird followed his own advice, and went back for more. At least the steward wasn’t stinting them on amounts—no one frowned when he picked up another half-loaf of bread and refilled his bowl.

When he was full, he lay back in the shadow of the old fireoak at the field’s corner until the horn blew. The afternoon’s work was always harder: the field seemed to swell with heat, lengthening every selion. Gird was soon back in the rhythm of the work. His mind seemed to hang on every close detail now, unwilling to soar abroad as it had in the morning. His shadow, at first a squat dark figure close beneath him, lengthened with the hours. He was still far ahead of the others, overtaking one after another on their selions, and swinging away beyond them. Yet no one minded: he was, he sensed, their pride as well as his own. Gird Strongarm, they said, grinning as he came past.

On the outer edges of the field, the women and older girls were binding the cut grain into shocks. None of his or Arin’s girls were old enough yet: only a woman who had bled could gather in harvest. But he could see Mali’s peaked hat busy among the others. Some years she worked first among the women, almost as much faster than others as he was. This year, she lagged, slowed by the coming child that made bending difficult.

By dusk, when he could feel the damp coming out, more than half the great field was down. Now the men joined the women in binding the last grain. Again tonight, they would eat the lords’ bread and meat—if there was any meat, Gird thought. Surely there would be. He found Mali, and led her up to the serving line. She moved heavily, and beneath the day’s sunburn, her skin was pale.

There was meat, although the steward’s men doled it out one slice to a loaf of bread. A pottage of beans, cheese, and a wooden cup of ale completed the meal. “No sweet cake?” Gird heard someone ask. The steward’s men said nothing, handing a serving to the next in line.

“I heard the steward tell the cooks they need not kill another sheep—that the great field would be done early enough that there’d be no evening meal tomorrow.” Mali kept her voice low.

“What?” Gird stared at her. “That’s—we can’t be done by noon, and if we work the afternoon, he has to feed us.”

Mali, her mouth full of meat, merely shrugged. Gird tore off a hunk of bread and chewed it, thinking hard. The custom had always been to feed them for any part of a day spent on the lords’ work. When they finished harvest a bit early, they had time for a rest before the meal, even a bit of singing. He worked his way through the bean porridge, which lacked the flavor of Mali’s, and wondered what could be done.

As it happened, Mali was not the only one to have heard the steward’s words. The men gathered cautiously after dark, in the lane near Gird’s cottage.

“Not fair,” said Teris. “We work faster, and they punish us—”

“So we can work slow, if Gird can hold back,” said Amis’s uncle.

Gird felt himself flushing. “It’s not my fault,” he said.

“No one said it was. But if being fast loses us a feast, maybe being slow will get it back.”

“ ’Course, he’s already told the cooks,” said Amis. “Might be even if he has to feed us, it won’t be much. No meat, anyway. And he’d be angry with us. Is it worth that?”

“Where’s Garig?” asked Pakul. “What does he think?”

“Garig’s in the steward’s back pocket,” said someone too softly to make out.

“We can’t do aught without him,” said Gird. “It’s not fair, I’ll stand to that, and do what I can, but we need Garig. It’s only he can speak for us to the steward, anyway.”

“I’ll say what I can,” Garig sighed, though, and Gird was sure he’d come back with nothing. “The steward—the steward’s told me some of it.”

“Of what?”

“What’s gone wrong. There’s a place—somewhere far off, I don’t know—where the lords come from, back when they come. It’s where they traded, over the mountains. It’s gone.”

“Gone? How can a place be gone?”

“Raided, I suppose, like a town the nomads have burned. Anyway, the lords got gold and jewels that way, and now they don’t.”

“So what’s that got to do with us?” asked Teris. “We need to eat, same as always, and it’s always been if we do the work on the lord’s field, he feeds us.”

“The count’s squeezing him,” said Garig. “So he’s squeezing us—that’s the truth of it. He has to send more—”

“We can’t.” Mutters of agreement with that, a low voiced growl. “Might’s well join the Stone Circle—”

“None o’ that!” Garig’s voice rang out. “We’ll have none o’ that talk here. D’you want the guards down on us? They’re outlaws, no better than brigands, that bunch.”

Gird agreed, but silently. He had heard more than one mention of the Stone Circle in the past two years. All he knew about them came from such brief encounters. The steward had warned Garig that anyone found helping a member of the Stone Circle would be turned out, if not killed outright. According to him, they were lawless, lazy farm lads who tried to get higher wages by threatening the farms—burning grain and hayfields, tacking herds in pasture, and so on. The other stories Gird had heard were of young men who saw no chance of marrying or having a place to farm—whose families could not spare the food, no matter how hard they worked. He tried not to think about it, about the disappearance of four or five younger sons from his own village in the past three years. Somewhere, the stories went, was a great circle of stones bigger than any mortal man could move, and into that circle fell miraculous showers of grain and fruit, more than enough for all who came. And the stones protected anyone who found the way inside, that was in the tales too. From that mysterious place, the movement took its name, promising peace and plenty in the days when “all men are stones of the circle, and none must run and hide.”

“I’ll speak to the steward,” Garig said, sounding more angry than understanding. “I’ll try—but no promises. And if there’s slacking tomorrow, we could all be in trouble.”

The men stood awhile in the lane, grumbling softly, when Garig had gone into his cottage and slammed the door. Gird was glad enough to stand there, in the warm darkness. Inside his own cottage, Issa’s sickness fouled the air, and the children bickered over their meager supper. He tried to tell himself that they were doing all right, better than some others, but it was poor comfort.

The next day, Gird worked as slowly as he could. Garig had said that the steward had consented to another evening feast, if the work took them past mid-afternoon. Mali could not come, but Issa was doing her best raking up the fallen heads of grain into baskets. He was worried about Mali. She had not looked really well since losing the one of the twins. This baby should be her last—would be, if he had to force the herbs into her himself. He grinned at that thought. Mall might be weaker, but she was as headstrong as ever.

They finished the greatfield before dark, but not long before. Gird noticed that everyone came to the feast quietly, with none of the usual songs and laughter. There was meat, sure enough—not abundance, but some, and plenty of bread and cheese. He made sure that Fori and Issa ate heartily, and stuffed himself. Tomorrow he could begin cutting their own strip, grain that would feed them and help pay the field-fee.

It was dark, the thick dark of a cloudy night, with enough wind to keep the leaves rustling uneasily.

“What?” Gird asked softly.

“We want to talk to you.” That was Teris, he could tell. Gird sighed.

“Do you have nothing better to do than—”

“Shhh. Not here. Come along with us.”

“Who’s us?”

“I told you he’d make trouble.” Tam’s voice, this time.

“I’m not making trouble. I just want to know what—”

“Come on.” Teris had his arm, and shook it. “We’ll talk, but someplace safe.”

Gird let Teris lead him along the lane, between two cottages that he was sure were Garis’s and Tam’s, and down between a barton wall and the gurgling stream. The night air smelled wet and green; he could pick out scents he never noticed by day.

“There’s someone here needs to talk to you,” Teris said. Gird felt his heart begin to pound. Someone in the dark, someone he didn’t know? He remembered all at once that Teris’s mother was reputed to be a dire witch, laying curses on those who crossed her. “Go on,” Teris said into the darkness. “Ask him.”

Someone he could not see cleared his throat and said “Teris says you know about soldiering.”

“No.”

“Yes,” hissed Teris, “You do.”

“We need—we want someone to teach us.”

“Who?” asked Gird. He thought he knew already. Instead of a spoken answer, he heard the click of stone on stone, and then felt a stone pressed into his palm.

“You know,” said the voice. “The farmer’s only hope . . . the only thing what won’t burn in the fire that’s coming . . .”

“But you’re not soldiers,” he said. “You don’t—”

“We need to know how. We’re getting enough, almost, now—if we only knew how to fight, and had weapons—”

“It won’t work.” Even here, where he was sure no one listened, he kept his voice low. “Running at ’em in a mob, like—they’ll just ride over you and ride over you—”

“We have to try.” His eyes were more used to the dimness; he could just make out Tam’s face and the gleam of his eyes. Tam’s weaker eye wandered off-focus, then came back. “We can’t be soldiers; we don’t have the training—”

“You!” Gird snorted. Tam couldn’t throw a rock straight, let along make a soldier. “You’ll just be killed, and they’ll take it out of your families and the rest of us. Use sense, man! You’d have to know how to march, how to use your weapons together—”

“You could teach us,” said the stranger, now a hunched black shape against the faint gleam of the water. “You were teaching them to march, Teris said. It was forbidden, but that didn’t stop you. And then—”

No one had brought up his cowardice to him for years. They’d accepted him, he thought, once he grew up and married, once he was bent to the same lash as the rest of them. What had they told this stranger, that his voice changed when he said “And then—?”

“I—can’t,” he said hoarsely. “I—I don’t remember enough of it.”

“You remember enough to know that an untrained mob is hopeless. You can’t have forgotten it all. I didn’t.” Teris again, hectoring as usual.

“I—”

“You’re scared still, aren’t you? After all these years—”

“He was my friend!” It came out louder than he meant, and he muted the rest of it. “I could not be part of what did that to him. That’s why I ran, and if you want to call that cowardice, fine.” He had never explained it to his friends before. Now the words poured out of him. “If you think I feared blood or pain, why d’you think I stayed in ’til then? If you remember so well, Teris, you must remember the beatings I got. You saw my bruises.”

“Well—yes. But they said—”

“They called it cowardice, and my father bade me accept that. ’Twas hard enough on us, without causing more trouble. And that’s what’s really wrong with them—that they’d think cowardice is not wanting to cause pain.”

“But you haven’t joined—” and the stones clicked again.

“No. I had the family to think of, not just my own but my brother’s. Once already I’d caused them all trouble; my mother died of the young lord’s enmity, when he refused us the herb-right in the common wood. And the Stone Circle when it started was young lads, unmarried and mostly orphans: they had no family to suffer if they were caught.”

“So—?”

Gird sighed. That bleak vision of his nightmares edged nearer, tried to merge with reality. “So—who will feed my wife, my children, if I go off to teach the Stone Circle how to march in step? Who will plow the field, or tend the beasts? If it could happen, and an army of peasants took the field, who would feed them? Some must plow and plant, some must spin and weave, or that army would die hungry and ragged, too weak to fight the spears.”

“Is that what you plant for? That army, or your family alone?”

Gird spat rudely at the stranger’s feet. “I plant for the lord, like all the rest, and we live on the spillage from the tax-cart—dammit, you ask questions like the steward laying blame for a cracked pot! You know my name, but hide yours; why should I listen to you?”

The stranger’s head moved, as if listening for something, then gave Gird a long, neutral stare. “You know it’s getting worse. You know we have no chance to resist without the knowledge you have. And you sit there, smug as a toad, giving good reasons to a bad argument—why shouldn’t I put a thorn in your backside? You think I have no family, or these others? Those lads who joined Stone Circle years back are fathers now, just as you are. Those that didn’t rot on the spikes. You think your children will thank you, for leaving them helpless before enemies?”

“They would not thank me for throwing them in prison to starve, either.”

“Take ’em with you.”

“No.”

“At least tell us something, something we can use.”

“I—” Gird looked around; there were four or five crouched nearby. He was sure of Teris and Tam, but not the others. Was Amis there? He could not tell. “I don’t think it will work, even if I taught you—even if real soldiers taught you. The best way for us is to work and keep our peace; what you do only makes the lords angrier, raises the taxes higher—”

The stranger growled, and stood. Gird stood too, and they faced one another a long moment. Then the stranger laughed softly. “It’s coming, Gird, whether you like it or not—you will see, and I hope you see before you suffer more deeply than a man can stand. I lost family; I would not wish that on anyone. My name is Diamod, when you want to find me again.”

Gird turned away, wondering if they would let him go. No one touched him. He felt his way along the wall of Tam’s barton, and then let his feet remember the way along the lane to his own cottage. Teris. Tam. Three or four others, who had not spoken so that he could not know who they were. Did they think he would tell Garig or the steward? His heart ached at that. His hands ached to strike something, anything. He would help them, if he had no family to think of. He could imagine himself teaching them as he had taught Teris and Amis and the others. But he could not risk Mali and Issa and the children.

He got back to bed without waking anyone up, and fell into heavy sleep. Dreams troubled him. In his mind’s eye, he could see them, ragged, workworn, scarred, hungry, running in uneven clumps and strings to strike at the horsemen with their poles and scythes, their sickles and clubs. Behind the horsemen, the lords’ army waited, trained soldiers in good armor, with their sharp swords and pikes. But they had nothing to do, for the horsemen could deal with the peasants. At the end—He woke with a jerk and a chopped-off cry. Beside him, Mali turned over and groaned softly, then snored.

In the thick darkness of the cottage, he seemed to see the past years as a painted streamer like the ones the lords sometimes carried on horseback. Hard work and hunger now, yes—but he had known hard work and hunger as a child. Yet his children were thinner than he had been, hard as he worked. He had never accumulated the store of coppers and silvers that his father had had beneath the hearthstone when it was needed. If something did happen with his own children, or Arin’s, he would not be able to do what his father had done.

The next morning, he was still thinking about it as he shoveled manure. What could he do? He could not imagine sneaking away from the village some nights, to train Stone Circle members, coming back at dawn to work, but he could not imagine taking his whole family into an uncertain future, either. He was mulling this over when he heard shouts from the lane, and the heavy roll of hoofbeats.

He went through the kitchen to find Mali and Issa and the children starting out the front door.

“Get back!” he shouted. They made way for him. He could see, now, people in the lane nearer the center of the village. Amis was headed out his front gate, and Gird moved slowly toward his own. He could hear the loud complaints, the bellowed orders of the guard sergeant, the cries of children. It must be the Stone Circle man, Diamod, he thought, but he didn’t see him. Had someone seen him? Reported him? He realized suddenly that his friends might think he had, if that was indeed who the guards were after.

It looked as if the guards were trying to search each cottage and barton. The noisy crowd surrounded them, not actually resisting but somewhat obstructive. The guards, some mounted and some afoot, moved toward Gird’s end of the village. Now he could see faces he recognized, guards and villagers alike. An old woman, Teris’s mother, was arguing with one of the soldiers, clinging to his arm, shaking it. He wrenched free of her and she staggered away, to be caught by her daughter. A child darted out into the lane ahead of the horses, and Amis went after him. The soldier riding the lead horse yelled something at him; Amis, intent on the child, shook his head and lunged forward.

Although he was behind the others, hardly out of his own door-yard, Gird saw exactly what happened. The soldier’s arm moved, and Amis turned, his shoulder already hunching against the expected blow. The soldier’s mace caught Amis full in the face, that familiar flesh disappearing instantly in a mush of blood and broken bone. One tooth flew free, a chip of white spinning in the hot sunlight before it fell out of sight behind the other bystanders. Gird felt something prick his hand, and looked down to see the handle of his shovel broken like a dry stick; he opened his hand and let the pieces fall.

As if in a dream, all motion slowed. One by one those at the back of the crowd turned to run, their eyes white-rimmed, their mouths open. Even before Amis fell to the ground, they had opened a path for the soldiers, those in front scrambling back, afraid to turn, afraid . . . and the soldiers’ horses, their high necks streaked with sweat, ridged with lather where the reins rubbed, setting their ironshod hooves down one by one, so slowly that it seemed they could hardly catch the terrified fugitives. Amis lay huddled, blood pooling in the lane, soaking into the dust, both hands covering his ruined face. One of the horses, bumped hard by another, placed a front hoof in the center of his back so slowly, with such precision, that Gird had to believe it was a deliberate choice. He could hear a terrible crunch over the other sounds, the thunder of hooves, the screams—

And motion returned to normal, the crowd flowing back along the lane in a panic, the leaders running flat out, arms wide. Behind, the horses surged, the soldiers yelled, their weapons slicing from side to side. Gird stepped back, between the plum trees; it was all he had time for before they were past, horses bumping and trampling over the slow and clumsy, in pursuit of the fleetest. From the corner of his eye, he saw Diamod, cause of the whole incident, slipping quietly from the back of Amis’s cowbyre to make his way over the fields.

Gird swallowed the same bolus of rage and fear that he had chewed and swallowed so often before. Now it was Amis on the ground, dead or dying he was sure and then it had been Arin torn by wolves, and before that Meris.

Amis breathed in difficult, jerky snorts. Gird laid his hand against his neck; the pulse was thin, irregular. Was Amis conscious at all? He should say something. What could he say?

“Amis? Can you hear me?” Stupid enough, but something. Amis’s hand twitched; Gird laid his own over it.

“You’ve got to do something!” That high voice was Eso, always ready for someone else to do something. “Get him to safety—wash his face—”

“Be still,” growled a deeper voice. Amis’s father. He knelt beside Gird, his face as gray as his beard. His hands shook as he reached out to his son. “Is he—?”

“He’s dying—I saw the mace hit his face, and a horse trampled him—” Gird gestured at the pulped mess of Amis’s back.

“And if they come back, they’ll but hurt him more.” Amis’s father held his son’s slack hand. “Gird—get a plank or bench.”

Gird nodded, and backed away on his knees. He shivered, nauseated, and barely made it to the trampled verge before throwing up, the morning’s food and a life’s bile together. Then he went into the front room, where Mali stood with her fist against her mouth, white as milk, and ripped the legs off one of the benches without a word. The long plank banged against the doorpost as he went out, and he almost lost control again. Amis. Kindly, cheerful, steady Amis, who had taken him to the sheepfold gathering to meet Mali—who had farmed alongside his strip for ten years, who had never done one thing wrong but be where a mace could destroy him—

Amis’s father and Gird wrestled Amis onto the plank; that long, lanky body felt wrong, as if it were a boneless sack of seedcorn. He was still breathing, a hoarse rattle, in and out, that bubbled the blood on his face. What had been a face. Gird thought of the cheerful brown eyes, the nose lopsided from a cow’s kick, the wide mouth.

Amis’s wife had fainted; Mali sat beside that crumpled heap, comforting the younger children, as Gird and Amis’s father carried him through, all the way into the barton. There they sponged the blood off his back, rolled him over. Gird turned his head aside and retched again. They could do nothing. Amis’s breathing filled the barton with pain. One of his brothers came, and stood beside them, watching. Amis’s wife, finally, biting her kerchief, holding their youngest baby close. Mali came to stand behind Gird, and put a hand on his shoulder.

Amis never woke, and when he finally quit breathing Gird could not at first turn away. Only the noise of the returning Guard, angry voices and the clash of weapons in the lane, loosened the paralysis that had locked his joints in place. He stayed calm in the turmoil that followed, giving his evidence to the steward in a slow, deep voice that came to him for that occasion. Amis had never been known as a troublemaker; his lunge at the guard’s horse was a grab for the child who had run unknowing into danger. The steward nodded, shrugged, remitted part of the death-fee, and evicted Amis’s wife to live with Amis’s father. Another family, strangers relocated from another vill, moved into it.

And Gird put a sack of grain at the far edge of the wood, with two stones on top of it. It was gone the next day.