“I think,” he said slowly, picking his way through possibilities as if along a steep mountain path, “I think Gird thought of Marshals selecting another Marshal-General. Perhaps a council of Marshals, perhaps all of them—I don’t know exactly what he thought. Whoever was chosen ought to have been a Marshal, I would think . . .”
“In other words, you don’t want the job.” Cob had Gird’s directness, if not all his other qualities. Luap spread his hands.
“I was never a Marshal. As well, you know my heritage, my vow to seek no command.”
“Aye, but you’re the one man might stand to both folk as the right person to lead now. It’s not like you’re taking anything from Gird; he’s dead.” Others nodded, around the long table. “You know the Code and the land; you were his choice for many things. And it’s not like you’d be a king—you’d have plenty of Marshals making sure you didn’t revert to that nonsense.”
It made sense, but he felt repelled. What he once might have thought his due, for all the work he’d done, what he had wanted when he thought no one would give it to him, he now did not want. The thought of having to perform Gird’s daily duties shepherded by Marshals who would no doubt look for any deviation from Gird’s custom made his skin itch. If he took command—any sort of command—it must be command. And besides, he’d promised Gird he wouldn’t.
“It would break my vow,” he said. Cob nodded.
“All right. Whatever anyone’s said, you’ve always been true to Gird; I’ve seen that. It’s not your fault who your father was, nor any of the rest of it. But that leaves us still with no decision.”
He might have changed his mind if they’d pressured him more, but he felt that even with Cob the offer had been as much courtesy as anything else.
“I do think,” Cob said, “that we ought to start calling you Marshal—you may not have sought command, but you’ve been doing Gird’s work all this time. If you’re not to be Marshal-General, you’ll still be needed in any councils, as you were with Gird.”
The word popped into his mind from some forgotten conversation. “Why not Archivist?” he asked. “Someone who keeps the records—that’s what I really am. You all earned the title of Marshal, leading yeomen—I haven’t done that.”
“Makes sense,” said Donag, down the table. “Like a scribe, only more so, eh? Judicar and scribe together, maybe. You’ll write Gird’s life, won’t you?”
He had not actually thought of that, in spite of having written accounts of the war, battle by battle. He had been hampered by Gird’s insistence that he include only the barest facts; the time he’d tried to explore the meaning of a battle to the morale of both sides, following a model in the old royal archives, Gird had insisted he rewrite it. “You don’t know what they thought, or even what most of our people thought: you only know who was there, and who won.” But it came to him in a rush how much good he could do, writing about Gird, making Gird come alive for later generations, so that those who had never met him would understand how great a man Gird had been.
“Yes,” he said to Donag, to all of them, to his own memory of Gird. “Yes. I will write Gird’s life.”
Aris, dressing carefully to take his part in Gird’s funeral procession, felt guilty that he felt no more pain than he did. He had loved the old man as the grandfather he had never known; he had admired him as the hero who had singlehandedly routed the wicked king. How could he be taking this so calmly? Only last Midwinter Feast, when his healer’s eye had recognized that Gird’s health was failing, he had spent several miserable days trying to hide his grief until Seri talked it out of him. He was not ready to lose Gird’s wisdom, he told himself. He was not ready to lose that straight look, the one that made him feel as if Gird were seeing into his head, finding all the messier corners of his mind. Yet—he had cried only briefly. His appetite was good. He had carried out his duties as yeoman-marshal of his grange, to his Marshal’s evident surprise and possible distrust. Could he really have loved and respected Gird, if he was acting so normally? Even Seri, usually level-headed and calm, had flung herself on Aris, sobbing wildly, in the first hours after.
You know better, said an almost familiar voice in his head. Better than what? he wondered, and answered himself: better than to think tears define sorrow. Of course he’d loved Gird, and Gird had loved him. But now they had to honor Gird’s memory, and go on with the work.
He rubbed at a possible smudge on his belt-buckle and went out to face his Marshal’s inspection. He had advanced from junior yeoman to senior yeoman with the others his age, as had Seri. To his surprise, he had been offered a trial period as yeoman-marshal in this, his second grange assignment. His first Marshal, Kevis, had recommended that he change granges for the next stage of training, and Gird had concurred. Seri’s promotion had surprised no one, except perhaps the pompous Marshal she had once played tricks on. And now he would walk at Marshal Geddrin’s side, at the head of the third grange formed in Fin Panir.
Geddrin, a massive man whose freckled face usually looked surprised, was frowning at his own image in a polished shield. By its shape, it had been captured from a magelord in the war. “Cut myself,” he said out of the side of his mouth. Shaving was a new fashion in the past few years, taken from the merchants and much commoner in cities than in rural granges.
Aris wondered whether to offer to heal it. Geddrin had accepted Gird’s word that Aris must be allowed to heal, but it clearly made him nervous to watch. And he might take the offer as an accusation of softness. He moved closer until he could see the cut, then whistled softly, “It’ll drip, Marshal, sure’s you start singing, where it is. Let me close it for you, and it won’t stain the cloak. . . .”
“Heal it, you mean,” said Geddrin, but without heat. “Say what you mean, Aris. But yes, go on—Gird’s seen my blood before; I’ve no need to look like I was showing off for him.”
“Yes, Marshal,” said Aris. So small a wound, clean and new, took only his touch and enough breath to make his knees sag. It vanished, leaving Geddrin’s face just as rough-scraped and freckled as before.
“If all the mageborn were like you . . .” Geddrin said, wiping the blade with which he’d shaved on a cloth, and slipping it into its sheath. He didn’t finish that, though Aris knew the thought in his mind. If all the mageborn were like him, there would have been no war.
One step to Geddrin’s rear, Aris led the grange’s cohort of yeomen around to the city gates where the parade would start. There the most senior Marshals decided the order of march. Aris listened to the mix of accents, the muttered comments on various Marshals, the rumors already abroad over who would be the next Marshal-General.
“—An’ I said to him, your Marshal may be a veteran but he’s all hard stone from his eyebrows back. Old Father Gird was tough, but he wasn’t stupid.”
“What I always say is, the ones you’ve got to watch is them quiet ones. The nicer they are, the more they’re looking for a way into your beltpouch, eh? Isn’t that so?”
“—So there we was, Geris and me, not an arm’s-length away from old Gird on that horse. An’ he was bashing heads, lads, like you wouldn’t believe, till one o’ them poles got him under the armpit and I was sure he was killed—”
“And you and Geris got him back up on his horse. Alyanya’s tits, Peli, we’ve heard that story every drill night since the war. . . .”
“I dunno why they don’t get his horse, the way we always heard in the songs. . . .”
“I heard nobody’s seen that horse these two days.”
“Eh? T’ old man’s horse?”
A silence spread; Aris could pick out the speaker now. A tall, stout woman with graying hair, whose old blue shirt hardly stretched across her front. She nodded, decisively. “I heard it from my daughter, who heard it from a lad who cleans the stables. That very evening, he said, going to tell the old horse, he found the stall empty. And the latch fastened, he said, and that’s what she told me.”