Two elves brought a length of white cloth bordered in intricate blue embroidery, finer than any Luap had seen, to wind the body in, and herbs to preserve it until the burial. The Gnarrinfulk gnomes sent a squad of gnomish pikes to stand guard over the body. A squat, red-haired, bandy-legged horse nomad appeared the second day with a sack of horsehair he claimed was the forelock and tail of his clan’s lead mare and stallion. The horse hair was to be plaited, it seemed, into rings for Gird’s great toes and thumbs, the remainder to stuff a pillow for his head. When the nomad found no one skilled at such work, he muttered but sat down in the main court to do it himself. Then, before the funeral, he rode away. Luap hoped he was satisfied; the horsefolk made difficult enemies, and might easily consider that Gird’s death dissolved any agreements with his successors.
The funeral procession began at the city gates, by the river. Veterans of the war marched, all in blue shirts or with blue rags around their arms; Marshals and yeoman-marshals marched with their staves; craftsmen and merchants and farmers walked in more ragged, but no less fervent, processions. Some groups sang, others marched in silence. Luap, along with the more senior Marshals, carried the poles on which the body rested. Out the palace gates to the west, into the meadows where someone (Luap had forgotten to think of it) had scythed the long grass and the city’s gravediggers had dug the grave. Now the little group came forward, and said the ancient words familiar in every peasant village: the father’s lament for a son, the mother’s lament for her child, the older and younger brother and sister. No one had spoken for the role of wife, and since Raheli lived, no one could take her place as a child, but the crowd together sang the short farewell.
When Gird’s body sank into the grave, and the first clods fell, the crowd wept as one, but they rose from that weeping refreshed again, sad but not despairing. Luap, standing by the heap of dirt, felt someone’s arm around his shoulders, and looked up to see Cob at his side.
“I’d hoped not to see it,” Cob said, shaking his head. “But then, when it came, I was glad—and that makes no sense at all. They say you were there?”
Luap’s scattered wits came back to him. Cob, he realized, must have ridden fast to make it here; he’d been at his grange, a hand of days normal travel from Fin Panir. “I was there,” he said. He felt tears rolling down his face again, as if a wound had opened.
“I was at the market,” Cob said, as if Luap had asked. “There was some dispute the judicar couldn’t settle, and they’d called me in. One of those days when you think everyone wants to quarrel and is looking for an excuse. I was ready to break a few heads myself, just to let some sense in, although I told myself it was the weather. Then like a weather change it came over us—I could see it in the faces of the others, as well as feel it. I even looked to see if the wind had lifted the pennants, or a storm had neared, for the change was that sudden, and that strong. One moment scowls and whines and angry voices; the next moment smiles and apologies and . . . I’ve never known anything like it. The two men who’d started the fuss turned to each other and shrugged, and the quarrel unknotted like greased string. I felt suddenly stronger and young again, convinced that Gird’s latest revision wasn’t silly after all, but would work.”
Luap had not had leisure to wonder what had happened beyond the immediate environs of the city; he was both fascinated and surprised. Had no one else seen the dark cloud, or recognized it? “How did you find out what really—?”
“Gnomes,” said Cob. “Don’t ask me how they knew, because I couldn’t tell you. The rest of that day went by with everyone in a holiday mood, and no reason for it. I would have worried, but couldn’t. Then that night, someone knocked on the grange door, and when I went to see, there was a gnome. ‘Your Marshal-General is dead,’ he said. ‘He has taken away the darkness from your human sight; he has freed your hearts from unreasoning fears and anger.’ I’d only met gnomes once before, at that Blackbone Hill mess you were lucky enough to miss; they didn’t talk like that. Afore I could ask any questions, he was gone, and I heard the beat of their boots, running all in step in the darkness.” Cob paused for breath, and cleared his throat. “ ‘Course, the darkness wouldn’t bother them, living understone as they do. But then I roused my yeoman-marshal, and called out the grange, and before dawn I was on my way. Rode day and night, I did, as if I’d lost thirty years, changing horses wherever I could. Met your messengers at Hareth—”
“Come on back,” said Luap. “There’s plenty of beds here—”
“He threw me, you know,” Cob said. “I was with him from the first, from the forest camp Ivis had, back in the Stone Circle days. I remember him coming in with his lad and his nephew, all hollow with hunger, and Ivis bade me wrestle ’im, and he threw me. Flat on my back, I was, before I knew what happened.” He shook his head. “Not many of us left, that started with him there, and I don’t suppose anyone from his vill at all, barring Raheli.”
“I wish she had been able to get here in time,” said Luap, meaning it.
Cob shrugged. “You sent word; that’s all you could do. Rahi’s got sense; she’ll understand.”
“And now what?” Cob scratched thinning hair. Every Marshal in Fin Panir and all those visiting had gathered in the old palace. “Th’ old man’s dead, gods grace his rest, and we’ve to decide what to do. Did he ever say, Luap, aught about what came next?”
“No . . . not really.” Luap looked around the table. “He wouldn’t be king, remember—I know he didn’t want to see a return of kingship. He wanted just what he always said: one fair law for everyone, and peace among all peoples.”
“So we’ve got a Code he revised every half-year, meaning he wasn’t convinced it was one fair law yet, and quarrels enough to break his heart—” That was a Marshal from the east, someone Luap barely remembered from the war.
“Not now,” Cob said. “No one’s quarreling now—it’s as if Gird himself cast a charm at us.” Even that word, so potent for strife, brought no frown to any face. “It’s in my heart that’s about what he did, him and the High Lord. Gave us some peace to sort ourselves out and have no more stupid quarrels, no more need to knock heads. But we’d best decide how to do that before everyone wakes up.”
“We could have a council of Marshals,” said Sekkin.
“We are a council of Marshals.” Cob scratched his head again. “Thing is, will that be enough? Gird himself knew we couldn’t go back to steading and hearthing organization, and the bartons aren’t large enough either, no more the granges. We’ve got to have summat up top, if not a king someone who’ll do what Gird did, at least in a way. . . .” His voice trailed off. No one could do what Gird did, and they all knew it. Gird, for all his talk of every yeoman’s abilities, had known it.
Eyes came back to Luap. Now, if ever, he could take what Gird had never offered, become Gird’s successor. He knew the Code better than any of them, having written more copies than he cared to remember of each revision, and he had traveled more than most of them, carrying Gird’s letters to each corner of the land. It would be logical—would have been logical, if he had been other than he was. Might still be logical, except that he had promised Gird, albeit in silence, in that last moment.