Paks watched him walk without a backward glance toward the other students, who were staring in the same shock she felt. He had them back to their drill in seconds, and did not look her way again. Paks forced herself to think, to move. She took off the scarf she had wrapped around her head against the cold, and bound it tightly around her leg. The bleeding had slowed, but she had left a sizeable stain on the ground. She could do nothing about that, but she did take a few seconds to stack the hacked limb neatly near the rest of the tree before limping back to the armory. Cieri still had the axe.
She looked back from inside the armory. Cieri was fencing with Con; no one looked her way. She felt cold, inside as well as out. She had been stupid—even rude—but was it really that bad? And had they all been resenting her since she came? She tried to think what to do. She took a roll of bandage material from its box beside the armory door, and retreated toward the stableyard, which had a well. It was midmorning; a stable worker trundled a barrow full of dung out the far archway as she came into the yard. No one else was in sight. Paks pulled the scarf away from her leg, wincing, and washed the wound out until the bleeding stopped before wrapping it with clean bandages.
The Training Master, she was thinking dully. I must see the Training Master—and then the Marshal-General. Her leg was hurting in earnest now, throbbing in time with her pulse. She rinsed the scarf in a bucket of water, and wrung it out, her fingers stiff from the cold water. When she looked up, two dwarves were watching her.
“Your pardon is it?” said the darker one. “Is it that you can say what way to the training field for the knights?”
Paks worked the meaning out of this. “Did you want Marshal Cieri?” she asked.
They nodded gravely. They hardly topped her head, the way she was leaning over the bucket, and she didn’t think it would be polite to stand. The darker one carried a double-bladed axe thrust into his belt; the yellow-bearded one carried his in his hand. “It is that we were asked to show something of this skill with the axe,” he said. “It is Marshal Cieri who teaches this, is it not so?”
“It is.” Paks felt her ears redden. She felt even worse than before. If he had asked dwarves to come and teach her—“It is through that arch,” she said, nodding toward it, “and then right, and through the building there.” She could not explain; besides, it might be something else.
“What is it that you do here?” asked the darker dwarf, peering into the bucket. “It looks blood.”
Paks blushed deeper. “It is—I cut myself, and this wrapped it at first.”
The dwarf nodded. “Cut—are you then not a student of the weaponsmaster?”
“I—am,” Paks hesitated, wondering if she should claim that now.
“But he is Marshal, yes? It is that he heals those injured in training?”
“Not this time,” said Paks, hoping they would go.
Four shrewd eyes bored into her. She could not read their expressions. Then the darker dwarf emitted a rough gabble of words that Paks had never heard before: dwarvish, she thought. The yellow-bearded one spoke to her. “I am Balkis, son of Baltis, son of Tork, son of Kertik, the sister-son of Ketinvik Axemaster, the first nephew of Axemaster. It is that you are not Gird’s?”
Paks had never met a dwarf, and did not know that this introduction was normal. She was trying to remember it all when the question came, and for a moment did not answer. The dwarves waited patiently. “I am not of the Fellowship of Gird,” she said finally.
“But you are here,” said the darker dwarf. “How is it that you are here?”
“I was offered a time of training here,” said Paks carefully, “because of something I had done.”
“Ah.” Another pause. Finally the yellow-bearded dwarf, Balkis, asked, “Is it that we might know your clan?”
Paks realized, belatedly, that she had not responded to his introduction with her name. “I’m Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, of Three Firs.”
An exchange of dwarvish followed this. Balkis spoke in Common again. “Please—is it that Three Firs is a clan? We do not know this name.”
“No, Three Firs is the village nearest my father’s home. It is far from here, to the north.”
“Ah. And your father is Dorthan, but of what clan?”
Paks wondered how to explain. “Sir, my father’s father was Kanas Jorisson, but I do not think we have the same kind of clans you do—”
Both dwarves laughed loudly. “Indeed, you would not! No—no, you would not. But some men think they have clans as we do, and give themselves names for them, and if you were such then we wished no insult by failing to acknowledge that name.” Then Balkis leaned back on his heels, watching her. “What is it that you did, to make a hurt the weaponsmaster would not heal?”
Paks looked down. “I—cut myself.”
“Yes, but—” He stopped, and leaned close to place his face before her. “I would not have you to think that it is our nature to be inquisitive.”
Abruptly, Paks found herself grinning. “Oh, no,” she said. “I wouldn’t think that.”
“Good. But we have to study men, who come into our rocks and want things of us. So it is that you will tell us what is that cut?”
“I was trying to use an axe,” said Paks slowly. “And I became angry, and struck too hard, and cut my leg.”
“Ah. Angry with an axe is dangerous.”
“So I found,” said Paks ruefully.
“And this the weaponsmaster found badly done, is it so?”
“Yes. And I was rude.” She wondered why she was telling them, but their interest seemed to pull it out of her.
“Rude—to a Marshal.” Suddenly the darker one loosed a volley of dwarvish, and both of them began to quiver. Paks looked up to see their eyes sparkling with mischief. “You fear not Marshals?”
“I—” Paks shook her head. “I should fear them more. I was here as a guest, and my rudeness will cost my place.”
“Ha!” Balkis nodded. “They are as a clan of adoption, and you are not adopted. So it is they can be unjust.”
“It wasn’t unjust,” said Paks. “It—they think I have been unjust, to take their hospitality without giving in return.”
Now they frowned. “You haven’t?”
“No.” Paks poured the stained water out on the cobbles and watched it drain away between them. “I thought—but I haven’t.”
“Hmph.” The snort was eloquent. “But it is you that are the fighter interested in axes?”
“Less than I used to be,” said Paks.
“Would you try again?” asked Balkis. His voice held a challenge.
“I might—if I have the chance.”
“If it happens that your weaponsmaster refuses you, I will show something,” he offered. “It is not every human that will be rude to Marshals of Gird, and be willing to work with axes past the first blood drawn.”
“But I was wrong,” said Paks, thinking ahead to what the Training Master would say. The dwarves both shrugged, an impressive act with shoulders like theirs.
“It is the boldness of the fighter,” said Balkis. “We dwarves, we will not take lessons from Marshals, despite their skill, for they are always insulting us. Did you know any dwarves, where you came from?”
“No,” said Paks. “You are the first I have ever met, though I saw dwarves in Tsaia and Valdaire.”
“Ah. Then you know not our ways. It involves no clan-rights, but perhaps you would sit at our table some night?”