Paks described the enemy’s apparent retreat, her Company’s forced march trying to catch them, and the ambush in the forest. No one interrupted with questions; even Con was quiet. She told them of the damp cold that night, when the wounded had no shelter, and no one had food, when the smell of the enemy’s food drifting across the locked squares made their hunger worse. And the next morning’s attack, their allies’ arrival. And finally the sudden weakness that toppled more than one of them, that long march and heavy fighting without food or rest.
“It’s not a matter of bravery,” she said. “You can live long without food, and stand and fight for a time, but not march and fight.”
Tigran nodded at her. “Most of you have never been hungry for long—and since you aren’t seasoned warriors, never when fighting.”
“I wonder why you came to study, Paks,” said Con after that class. “You already know as much as the Marshals—”
“No. No, I don’t.” She wondered how to explain what she didn’t know. “I know what a private knows—the soldier in the cohort—”
“It seems plenty—”
“No, listen. I always wanted to learn, and so I paid attention to the sergeants, and the captains when they talked in my hearing. But I only know it from the bottom. I don’t know how to plan—how to think of more than one cohort at a time. You know how to reckon amounts for any number—right?” He nodded. “Well, I don’t. My sergeant taught me to divide by three, to find our cohort’s share of the Company’s supplies. And I can add that three times, to go from a cohort’s share to the whole Company. But that’s all. He told me one time that Marrakai, when he goes to war, has five cohorts. I can’t reckon in fives at all.”
“You can’t? But it’s not hard—”
“No, maybe not. But you know how, and I don’t. And in tactics, I know some things not to do, but I don’t always know why. I can write well enough, and read—but I can’t write a description of a battle, as Marshal Drafin showed us, or read one and make sense out of it. The sand table is one thing, but those books—”
“Huh. I thought after the first night that you knew everything—or thought you did.”
Paks shook her head again. “I won’t ever know everything—there’s not time enough to learn all I want to know—”
“Now that’s an interesting sentiment.” The Training Master had appeared, as usual, without warning. Paks had begun to wonder if he had magical powers. “Are you serious in what you say?”
Paks was, as always, wary around him. “Yes . . . sir.”
“You feel you have much more to learn—even with your practical experience?”
Paks felt an edge of sarcasm in his voice. She stiffened. “Yes. I said that.”
“Don’t bristle at me.” To her surprise, he was smiling. “One thing that worried the Marshal-General was the possibility that you might find these things too boring—”
“Boring!”
“Don’t interrupt, either. We have had a few other veterans who found them so—who were so intent on what they had done already that they could not learn new things.” He looked intently at Con, who colored. Paks wondered what that was about, but was glad enough he wasn’t after her. “How are you coming with your reading?” He was after her. She wondered if he’d heard what she had said to Con. She hated having to admit her weaknesses.
“Not—very fast, sir.”
“I thought so.” It did not sound too sarcastic. “Paksenarrion, the only way to learn to read faster and better is to read—just like swordplay. You can’t learn swordplay from a book, or reading from your sword.”
“But if I can listen to someone who knows—”
He shook his head. “Paksenarrion, no one knows everything—you’re not alone in that. Writing stores knowledge, for others to use who may never know the writer. You know how tales told change in the telling—” She nodded, and he went on. “That’s why writing is so important. Suppose you are in a battle; if you can write well enough to describe it accurately, then others can learn from your experience many years from now.”
“It’s too late.” Paks looked down. She had hated turning in her scrawls when the others wrote neat, legible hands. “The ones who can write started earlier.”
“And when did you start with staves? And you’re already out of the novice class, into intermediate. Work at it. As for you, Con,” the Training Master turned to him. “You quit worrying about your standing with the juniors, and start spending your evenings on tactics. And supply. Perhaps if you’ll explain reckoning in all numbers to Paks, she’ll explain why you can’t march a cohort for two days on sixteen measures of barley and a barrel of apples.”
“Apples? I meant to write salt beef.”
“Your writing is not much better than Paks’s—neither Tigran nor I could decide what you really meant, so we called it apples. So might your supply sergeant, someday.”
She could not remember when she had felt so at home. Not even in the Company, that last year. Instead of Saben and Canna, she had Rufen, Con, and Peli. They spent hours with pebbles and beans, teaching her reckoning. She taught them all one of her favorite sword tricks, so that Cieri, bested three times in one day, glared at them all, and accused Paks of trying to get his job as weaponsmaster. She began to read faster, and understand more complicated books and scrolls. They began to realize, as Rufen explained one night, that the soldiers they might command one day were real people.
“I knew they were,” he said thoughtfully, “and yet I didn’t. Here we talk about supplying a cohort, or positioning a squad of archers over here, and a couple of cohorts of pikes there. They’re just—just bodies. Soldiers. Gird forgive me, being a Girdsman, but I looked like that at my father’s guardsmen . . . they all wore a uniform, they all wore the same weapons. But after knowing you—and you were, as you say ‘just a private’—I know they’re real people.”
Paks looked down, suddenly moved almost to tears. She felt, for the first time, that these were real friends. She could talk to them about the Company—about the people in it—with no betrayal of trust. Little by little she opened up, a few words at a time about Stammel and Devlin, Vik and Arñe—even Saben and Canna.
She had special status with the juniors—for Aris Marrakai had told his friends about her protecting him from Con’s bullying. They did not venture to intrude on the upper floors very often, but she was conscious of shy smiles and friendly greetings from the whole group that Con despised.
Then there were the other races, seen close-to for the first time. The elf who had spoken to her the first night often ate at her table. When he saw her interest, he taught her a few words of elventongue—polite greetings and other courtesies. Some evenings he played the hand harp and sang; Paks and the others listened, entranced. Paks might have thought him a mere harper and wordsmith, but he came to weaponsdrill from time to time, and only the most advanced students fenced with him. Paks lost her sword twice in one session.
The dwarves kept more to themselves, and Paks might not have met them but for an accident with an axe. She had asked to learn axe-fighting, remembering Mal’s effectiveness, and Cieri shook his head.
“I can teach axe-work, but to be honest, Paks, I don’t know as I’ve ever seen a good swordfighter take to the axe. You’re likelier to make a good spearman than be good with it. But whatever you want—as long as you keep improving with staves.”
“I still don’t understand why that’s so important.”
Cieri grinned. “You don’t, eh? Well, keep in mind that the rest of us are Girdsmen. Gird was a farmer, not a lord’s son to have a sword at his side. He won the freedom of the yeomen with weapons they could find or make: clubs, staves, cudgels—and an occasional axe. Every Girdsman learns to use those first; every Knight of Gird can not only use, but teach the use of, the weapons you can find anywhere. Then no yeoman of Gird is helpless, so long as a stick is within his reach.”