“To sit down until you recover,” Dirk said, still breathing heavily, “and to have a drink.”
Korgash smiled again. “Yes, sergeant!” He moved to sit down, started to fall, but two of his buddies jumped forward to catch him and ease him down on a bench.
As they gathered around him, praising and reassuring, Cort stepped over to Dirk. “Very imp … impreshive, Shergeant. But those … tricksh won’t work … twishe. ”
“They don’t have to,” Dirk assured him. “I’ve got fifty more.”
“The’ll try t’ uzhe ‘em on you,” Cort warned. “They’re not as easy as they look,” Dirk answered.
But Cort wasn’t listening; he had reached the remorseful stage of drunkenness. He turned away, shaking his head and muttering, “Shouldn’t‘a letcha do it. Korgash’s lethal, prob’ly a changeling.”
“Changeling?” Dirk frowned. “Isn’t he a little big to be an elf left in somebody else’s cradle?”
“Big?” Cort frowned up at Dirk, then squinted, trying to bring him into focus. “ ‘Course he’s big! Fair Folk’re bigger’n him!”
“Are they really?” Dirk said slowly.
“Ev’body knowzh ‘at.” Suddenly, Cort’s knees gave way. He folded onto a bench, blinking.
The soldiers didn’t notice; they were busy putting the chairs and tables back in order. Dirk sat down to keep Cort company.
“Ale for the officers!” A wide trooper slammed two tankards down on the table. “After a fight like that, sergeant, you need it!”
“Thanks, uh, private.” Dirk managed to spot the man’s single stripe as he turned away. Then he turned back to pull the ale away from Cort, but the lieutenant already had the flagon tilted to his lips, gulping thirstily, dribbles running down at each corner of his mouth. Dirk raised a cautioning hand, but Cort managed to lower the empty flagon and say, “Can’t trusht women, shergeant,” before his eyes closed, and he slumped forward onto the table.
A nightbird called, and the family came rushing back into the house; even the grandmother hobbled as quickly as she could.
“Nightbirds don’t call in the daytime,” Gar said to the ancient, tangle-haired, sack-clothed man next to him, “and the sun hasn’t quite set yet. Was that their lookout?” He knew the answer, of course, but had to make it look as though he didn’t.
“It was,” Ralke told him. Bilar’s family had brought him gypsum to whiten his hair and beard and cooking grease to make it stringy. He looked very much like any of the village grandfathers, and this house had none anymore. “Get under the straw, quickly!”
Gar dove in and held his breath. Small feet came pattering, and children heaped the mouldering, foul-smelling straw high over him. Gar wondered if they only had clean bales every fall.
The inside of the but smelled of stale sweat and staler cooking odors; the aroma had slapped Gar in the face when he’d stepped in through the hidedoor. The place was dark and foul; he’d stepped to the side carefully, and waited for his eyes to adjust. Then he’d wished they hadn’t.
The dwelling was a circle twenty feet across, a dugout four feet down from ground level with the haystack-thatched room starting where the earthen walls left off. The thatch, like the sleeping pallets, was of old and rotting straw—again, probably replaced only in the fall, when the harvest yielded fresh heaps. In fact, Gar doubted whether it was properly thatched indeed, or only piled on layer by layer, like the haystack it resembled. There was a wooden frame to hold it up, made of bent tree branches, but no boards to bridge the spaces between them, only a sketchy network of wither. A fire smoldered in a central pit, directly below a smokehole. The floor was earth, hardened by generations of calloused feet. There was one pitiful attempt at a rug, maybe six feet square, woven of rags. Heaps of soiled straw lay along the foot of the wall, beds for the family. Daytime living centered around the fire.
There wasn’t even an attempt at privacy.
The posts that held up the roof served for hanging two pots and pans, a scythe, several hoes, and a saw. There were no weapons, of course.
“So this is how the average family lives in this land,” Gar muttered.
Ralke nodded. “Now you see why everyone dreams of going to the towns. Of course, most folk there live no better than this, but there’s always the chance of making enough money for a better life. Here, there’s no chance at all.”
Now, an hour later, Gar lay under the straw, trying not to breathe the odors of mildew and stale sweat. A sudden weight landed on his hips, then spread out from his knees to his shoulders; he grunted. A clear female voice told him, “Pardon, sair, but ah mun hide ma face—an’ they’ll ne’er think I’m layin’ atop a man.”
“Thanks for the disguise,” Gar wheezed. Then both he and the girl settled into waiting in suspense for the soldiers to come stamping in. They had passed by four hours before, quickmarching through the village and roaring at the peasants to get out of their way—laughable, really, considering that everyone had disappeared into their houses the second the sentry had called, “Boots coming!” But they had trotted out of the village as quickly as they had come in, hot on what they thought was the caravan’s trail—after all, the mules had to stay on the road, didn’t they? They scarcely spared a glance for the fields, and didn’t seem to notice that there were more field hands, and more mules, than normal.
Now, though, they must have searched everywhere the caravan could have gone in so short a time, and were coming back to double check.
“One side!” a boot bellowed as he burst through the doorway. “Let’s see what you’re hiding!” Then he noticed the girl lying on the straw. He laughed low and in his throat, as he, strode over, reaching down. “Here now, sweetmeat! Don’t hide your face from me! Turn and show me your beauty!”
“None of that!” a voice barked, and another boot came in.
The family moaned and cringed away.
“There’s no time for skin-games now,” the brute snapped. “Besides, if she’s worth looking at any, the boss will want her!”
“Aye, but if she’s only half-pretty, she’s our meat,” the boot protested.
“Then come back another day! We’re looking for merchants now, not toys!”
“As you will, brute,” the boot said with disgust. He drove his toe into the straw.
There was enough of it to weaken the impact, but Gar still felt the blow on his shin, then on his thigh, his belly, and his chest. He clamped his jaw to keep from grunting at the pain.
“Nothing there but a year’s rot,” the boot said in disgust. “It’s packed tight from a year’s sleeping. How can you live like this? You, there, boy! Remember when you grow up—boots get clean straw every month!”
“We’ll recruit them later,” the brute snapped. “You on the bed by the door! Why aren’t you in the fields?”
“Sick,” Bilar groaned.
The brute backed away, making the sign against evil. “What sickness is it, woman?” he demanded. “Only bread that molded too much, sair,” Bilar’s wife whined. “I hope.”
“Well, keep an eye on him, and if anyone else gets stomach pains, keep everyone inside,” the brute ordered. “We don’t want pestilence spreading among you cattle. Boot! Check those other three beds while I check these!”
Gar heard a succession of kicks all around the hut. Then the brute said with disgust, “Nothing. They must have hidden in the woods between here and the castle. Off with you, now!” He went out the door, bellowing, “Form up!”
“How old is she?” the boot asked Ralke. “Answer true, or you’ll feel a boot’s boot!” He chuckled at his own cleverness.
“Twelve,” Ralke answered, his accent thicker than normal. “She’m budded early, our Else, though she’m still be but twelve.”