The tunic and hose were made of good stout broadcloth, better than any Coll had ever worn.
By midafternoon, they had come out of the wastelands and were riding through farmland that had been fruitful sometime in the past. Now, though, the rolling fields were littered with broken spear shafts and wagons, lying on their sides or in pieces, rotted spokes drooping from wheels that no longer had their iron rims. Among them lay the bones of horses and oxen, picked clean—and even, here and there, the bones of men, some with rags of livery still clinging to them, flapping in the breeze. Occasionally they saw a broken spearhead or halberd blade; all other iron was gone, scavenged.
The wreckage clustered along lines where armies had met and fought, lines that divided the fields in place of the hedges that had been trampled underfoot. Peasants were plowing those fields again, as the needs of life triumphed once more over the profligacy of death.
“This was a hard battle.” Gar gazed out over the fields, his face somber. “Who fought whom?”
Yes, they were outlanders. “Count Ekhain and Earl Insol,” Coll told them. “The wasteland is Count Ekhain’s; the little river that borders it also borders these rich lands of Earl Insol’s—or lands that were rich, once.”
“So Count Ekhain tried to take them, and Earl Insol fought him off,” Gar interpreted. “Did Ekhain have any excuse?”
“Excuse?” Coll stared. “Why would he need an excuse?”
“Why indeed?” Gar murmured.
“Some sort of justification, maybe?” Dirk prodded. Coll shrugged. “What justice could there be in war?”
“That plowman.” Gar nodded toward the nearest field, where a grey-headed man with a white beard wrestled with a share. A boy ran along beside the beast’s head with a switch, shouting at the animal now and again to keep it in a straight line. “Isn’t he a little old to be cutting a furrow?”
“Yes, but what choice has he?” Coll replied. “All the young men and the fathers are away at war. Who is left to guide the plow but the grandfathers?”
Gar shuddered. “Let’s hope the war will be over soon!”
“What matter?” Coll shrugged again. “There will be another one in a few months.”
Gar turned to stare at him. “Always?”
“For as long as I can remember, at least,” Coll told him, “and my father before me.” Really, he was beginning to think these men weren’t just strangers—they must be simpletons, too, not to see something so obvious. Wars end? How could wars ever end?
Of course, they might not have been simpletons, but simply from very far away indeed. For a moment, excitement stirred in Coll’s breast. Could there actually be places where wars did end? Where a whole county or duchy might find ten or twenty years of peace? But he shrugged off the notion almost as soon as it came. Fairies and elves were real—everyone knew that, even though they had never seen them—but a land without war? Impossible!
Dirk nodded at the plowman, his white hair tousled by the wind. “How old is that grandfather? Sixty? Or only fifty?”
“Fifty!” Coll stared, amazed. “Few serfs indeed live to that age! No, sir, that man is surely only thirty-five, perhaps forty at the most!”
Dirk stared, and Coll could see that he was unnerved. “I would age early too, in such a land,” Gar said gently. Dirk swallowed thickly and nodded.
Coll was all the more flabbergasted. Surely they were crazed! Surely there could not truly be a land where plowmen lived to be sixty! A lord might live that long, but surely not a serf—and to still look youthful at thirty-five? Impossible!
A similar thought seemed to have occurred to Gar, because he turned and asked, “I had thought you were in your thirties, Coll. How old are you?”
“Thirties?” Coll stared, wondering if he should take offense. “I am twenty, sir!”
“Indeed.” Gar sat gazing at him for a minute, then nodded and turned his face back to the road. “I think we chose the right place, Dirk.”
“I should say we did!” Dirk averred, and came after him.
Coll followed Dirk, wondering.
Then he saw the woman sitting by the roadside with a miserable, scrawny child clutched to each side of her, and anxiety stabbed him. How long before Earl Insol warred against the king? How long before the soldiers reached Coll’s mother and sister? For surely the knight would already have sent Dicea home grieving … His blood boiled at the thought, but Dirk’s voice distracted him, even though he was speaking in a low voice, to Gar. “How old is the woman?”
“I would have said fifty,” Gar replied, “but judging by what Coll’s been telling us, she can’t be more than thirty.” Coll glanced at the woman and nodded.
“Are those boys or girls?” Gar’s voice was still pitched low. “Or one of each?”
“Can’t say, just by looking,” Dirk replied, “but I’d guess they were five years old, both.”
“So skinny…” Gar shuddered.
Coll looked more closely, and felt a stab of pity. These were children who had never known a time without war, without soldiers marching through their village—and never known a day without hunger, or with enough to eat. He wondered if their father still lived, and if so, with which army he marched.
The woman raised bleary eyes at the sound of the horses’ hooves, then pushed herself to her feet with a sudden burst of energy, cupped hands outstretched. “Alms, good sirs! A penny for the children, a heel of bread, a crust! ”
“More than that!” Dirk said with indignation, even a little anger. He pulled a loaf from his saddlebag.
Gar touched him on the shoulder. “Not too much. They’re starving…”
Coll frowned. Surely, if they were starving, that was all the more reason to give them as much as they would take! But it was the knights’ food, after all, and if they didn’t want to share too much, who could blame them?
Dirk gave a curt nod, broke off the heel, and handed it to the woman. She took it eagerly and started to break it, but Dirk said, “No. One for each of you.”
The woman froze, staring at him, amazed.
Dirk broke off another piece, and another, taking up half the loaf, and handed them down. “Here, eat.” As they began to gobble the bread, he looked a question at Gar, who nodded, and Dirk turned around to dismount. “Some broth would help.” He took a pot and a handful of rods from his saddlebag, and a small box with them. Stepping off the road, he unfolded the rods and set a ring with four short legs on the ground. He kindled a fire beneath it, set the pot on top of it, poured in water from his water bag, took a cube of something dark from the box, and dropped it in. The woman watched him with curious, avid eyes, and as the water began to boil, she sniffed the aroma of beef broth with delight. “It has to boil,” Dirk told her, “then cool—but it will be good to drink.”
The children pressed in, half hiding behind their mother, staring at the pot with famished eyes.
“Are your children boys or girls?” Dirk asked with a gentle smile—but the woman stiffened with alarm, clutching both little ones to her as she rattled, “Boys, sir, both boys!”
Coll wondered why Dirk seemed so startled. Surely he must know that any girl had to be protected from the lords’ soldiers, no matter how young.
“They’re fine young lads of ten and twelve,” the mother assured Dirk. Coll understood why the knight seemed so startled, so troubled, for he had heard him guess at their ages.
Mother and children were sitting by the roadside, eating a little more bread and drinking the broth from wooden mugs, when harness jingled, and horse hooves sounded on the road.
“Company,” Gar said softly, and Dirk paused in the act of dropping his cooking gear back into his saddlebag, to look up at the armored knight with his dozen men behind him, coming up the road toward them. Dirk mounted his horse as Gar said in a hard, low voice, “Take them into the woods, Coll.”