“Which is?”
“A chance to strike back at the boots and the boss in some small way.” Ralke flashed him a grin. “Oh, they’ll help us, right enough.”
Gar could scarcely tell where the fields left off and the village began. The only clue was a large circle of bare, beaten earth with the smoldering remains of a communal fire in its center. Around it stood a ring of low, moldering haystacks—or at least, that was what Gar took them for at first. But when Ralke said, “Here’s our hiding place,”—Gar looked more closely and saw holes in each haystack, pointing toward the central fire. These were actually shelters where people lived!
Ralke held up a hand to halt the caravan—only twenty barebacked donkeys now, with ten riders and two wounded men on litters. Then he called out, “Headman Bilar! It’s Ralke who calls!”
A head popped out of one of the guts, almost as unkempt as the thatch above it. Then a body followed it, and Gar had to throttle back a gasp of dismay. The man was old, ancient, bald on top with a fringe of long hair stringy with dirt and snarled from never knowing a comb. It straggled into his beard and down his back, not that Gar could tell where beard left off and hair began, for both were light gray. All he wore was a sort of sack made of coarse brown cloth, faded to tan but darkened by dirt. His arms and legs were scrawny and scarred here and there from work accidents, and his feet were bare, the soles toughened almost to horn—but he was alive, Gar realized. He wondered how many of his generation could have said the same.
The oldster came up to Ralke and said, “Greet ye, merchant!”
“And I greet you.” Ralke held up a palm. “How go the crops, gaffer?”
“They’m still stand, sair, thank ‘ee. No war this year yet.”
“And the rain has been good.” Ralke nodded. “Where’s Bilar?”
“He’m in t’ fields, sair. Will ‘ee have us call ‘im in?”
“I think so,” Ralke said slowly.
The gaffer turned and gestured. Several other heads had poked out of doorways, now that the old man had shown them it was safe. One of them nodded and shot away running—a boy of six or seven, Gar decided, wearing only a loincloth.
The women began to come out, with children clinging to their skirts. They wore their hair shoulder length or longer, tousled and snarled, mostly of varying shades of brown with here and there a blonde or redhead. A few were slender and had no wrinkles in their faces or arms—presumably young. Most of them had thickened with maturity and childbearing, though, and even those whose hair hadn’t begun to gray already had nets of wrinkles on their faces. The gray-heads, many of whom were balding, also had wrinkled skin on arms and hands—and presumably legs, though there was little of them to be seen. They wore the same sacklike garment as the old man, except for the ones who had babes in arms, beginning to nurse again now that the alarm was past. These women wore the sacklike garment cut in two, so that they could lift the waist of the “blouse” to expose a nipple for the baby.
Gar felt not the slightest stirring of desire. What repelled him most wasn’t the lack of grooming nor the dowdiness of their clothes, but he air of resignation and defeat they all wore. The whole village seemed immersed in sadness.
Several old men hobbled out on canes to sit by the doorways in the sunshine. Only the one Ralke had called “gaffer” was fit enough to walk unaided.
Gar noticed that there were far fewer old men than old women.
“Sit ‘ee down, sair,” the gaffer said to Ralke. The merchant complied, and Gar sat with him. “If ‘ee has aught to sell, though,” the gaffer said, “I’m afeard we have nowt to buy with.”
“It’s always so, gaffer. We’ll give you what little news we have for free.”
“Thank ‘ee, sair, thank ‘ee!” The gaffer beckoned, and all the people came crowding around. Even the old men hauled themselves to their feet and tottered over to hear Ralke begin the news.
Gar quickly became lost. It seemed to be only a list of which boss was fighting which, and what bully had raided what other boss’s bully’s border. It was relieved by the occasional account of a bully who had been hanged for betraying his lord, and the odd boss who had been killed on the battlefield, losing his domain completely to his enemy. Ralke added in reports of good crops, and reports of droughts which were fortunately distant.
The villagers hung on his every word, for even though all the stories were drily variations on a common theme, they were news of the world beyond the boundaries of their bully’s fields.
Finally there was a shout, and they looked up to see a middle-aged man wearing only a loincloth come trotting in behind the boy. The crowd pulled back, and the headman stepped up to Ralke, who stood to greet him. Breathing hard, the headman nodded and said, “Greet you, merchant.”
“Greet you, headman.” Ralke grinned. “It has been a long year, but not a bad one, from what your villagers tell me.”
“Not bad at all,” Bilar said, more with relief than with satisfaction. “The crops were good, and the bully left us enough flax to make new clothes. He even sent us meat once a month, and only took three girls for his bed.”
“A good year indeed,” Ralke said, with a very forced smile.
“That doesn’t mean we have anything to buy with, though.”
“But we do,” Ralke said.
Murmurs of wonder went through the camp. “We ask a night’s food and lodging of you,” Ralke explained. “I’ll pay two copper coins for each man.”
Bilar frowned. “How’s this, merchant? Every other year you come, you and your men camp in the village common!”
“Yes, but every other year, we haven’t had boots chasing us.”
A whirlwind of hubbub and speculation caught up all the villagers, filled with fear and protest. Bilar’s frown deepened. “The boss would hang us all for traitors!”
“The boss doesn’t know about it,” Ralke told him. “His steward has sent the soldiers out to hunt us down. We beat them off once, but they’ll come again.”
“The steward would be a bad enemy, too.” But Bilar seemed relieved. He glanced up at Gar and said, “We could say you forced us.”
“You could,” Ralke agreed.
“How would we hide you? Where would another dozen men have come from?”
“My men will strip down to loincloths and go out into the fields. They’ll lash sticks together to form sleds, and harness the mules to draw them for haywains—you are haying, aren’t you?”
Bilar nodded, a gleam in his eye. “Then come nightfall, we bury ‘em under the hay, yes?” He jabbed a thumb at Gar. “Take a heap o’ hay to cover him!”
“It would,” Ralke agreed. “He and I would both stay in your houses. I’ll wear a tunic—you must have one or two waiting to be mended. Gar will lie against the wall, and you can cover him with straw and rags, to pretend he’s a bed.”
“Might work,” Bilar said, “and if they find him, we can always say we feared to anger him.” He looked up and down Gar’s great length and said, “Even boots’d believe that.”
“I’d believe it, too,” Gar said. “Sometimes I even scare myself.”
Bilar threw back his head and laughed. Then he said, “I’ll ask.” He turned back to beckon his people around him. Excited, they came, crowding into a huddle, and a torrent of talk poured forth. The other grown men came running in from the field and joined the huddle. Furious argument erupted.
Ralke leaned back, arms folded. “They’ll come to it eventually,” he said.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve left a few coppers among them, is it?” Gar asked.
Ralke looked up, startled, then nodded slowly, his face a mask. “As I told you—I was born and grew up in a village like this.”