Piri nodded, somewhat shamefaced, and turned to leave. Raheli called her back.
“It wasn’t a bad idea, lass, and I’m not angry. You’re one that doesn’t like angry words or bickering: that’s good. But sometimes there are things worth angry words; you must have the courage to endure the anger when it’s needed. I know you have that courage, but you may not have recognized it yet.”
Raheli was not surprised when Erial showed up later that day. Piri and Erial had been friends too long for communication to fail, no matter that certain words could not be said. Erial’s approach, like Piri’s, began obliquely.
“Marshal, do you think married women can become Marshals?”
“Become, or stay? A few wives commanded cohorts in the war, but those whose families lived preferred to return to them afterwards. I think it would be hard to do a Marshal’s work and a wife’s work as well. Even more, a mother’s work. It would be like trying to be the wife of two families. Marshals are, in a way, the grange’s wife and mother.”
Erial grinned at her. “You are, Marshal, the way you visit everyone and help those in trouble.”
“Good commanders were the same way: a cohort’s not that different from a family. It needs food, healing, comforting, and someone to resolve disputes.” Raheli wondered why Erial had started from that direction, but never missed a chance to teach. “Why did you ask—are you planning to combine the two?”
“No. You know better.” Erial scowled and looked away.
“Some like you do, to have children. Half the time I see you, you’ve got all your cousins trailing behind; for all I knew you wanted some of your own.”
“It’s because my aunt’s been sick; you know that. And they like to play marching games, but none of them remember the commands.” Nonetheless, Erial had a sheepish look; Raheli suspected she enjoyed watching her cousins more than she would admit. She had lived with her aunt since her own mother died. “No—” Erial went on, sobering, “—it’s about a friend, that I think would make a good Marshal, only she’d have to be a yeoman-marshal first, and she thinks she can’t do that and be married.”
“Piri,” Raheli said, seeing no purpose in dragging this out.
“Yes, Pir. She used to talk about it a lot, learning to do what you do, protecting the vill—all until she got silly over Sim.”
Raheli had no trouble with this one. “She’s not ‘silly over Sim’—she wants to marry him, and he wants to marry her. And I can’t agree with you: Piri would not make a good Marshal except in wartime, if then—she had a youngster’s taste for adventure, that’s all, and now she’s grown out of it.” Erial opened her mouth, shut it, and scowled fiercely as a young wildcat.
“But I know someone else who would make a fine Marshal,” Raheli went on. She hadn’t meant to, but in thinking over the prospects earlier she’d realized just how outstanding Erial was. “If someone else wanted it, that is. Even though it would mean moving to another grange for part of her training, and who-knows-where after that.” Erial turned red, then pale, and her eyes shone.
“Me?” she squeaked. It was a safe guess; there were only seven girls in the older group of junior yeomen, and Erial had to know she and Piri were by far the best.
“You.” Raheli ticked off the reasons on her fingers. “You know the drill; you learn fast; you can teach—your cousins prove that. You have no betrothed to go into a decline when you leave. You don’t stir up trouble with lads or lasses—”
“Sim’s mad at me,” Erial muttered.
“Sim’s a young lad crazy about Piri, and jealous as . . . as a cockerel. That’s not your fault. I’m not blind and deaf; I know how you’ve acted, and you haven’t put pressure on Piri. Sim has. And you’re the one who had that notion of being Marshal in the first place; Piri was following you, the way she always did until she veered off to follow Sim.”
“You’re saying I haven’t grown out of it?” Erial asked in a shaky voice.
Raheli chuckled. “And you’ve got the resilience, the toughness, to survive some hard years with another Marshal, among strangers. And even more important to me, while you like the work and the weaponlore, you don’t like to hurt people. Alyanya forbid, but if you ever had to fight in battle, you might like it more than I did—but you wouldn’t turn cruel. I can trust you for that. So—do you want to be a yeoman-marshal?”
“Yes!” Erial said. Then her face fell. “No . . . no, I can’t. There’s my cousins; if my aunt dies—”
“We’ll let Piri lead your cousins around for awhile: you’d trust her, wouldn’t you? And if your aunt dies, the grange will help; you know you can trust me. Take your chance, Erial, when it comes. Unless you don’t want it.”
“I do.” She glowed with delight; Raheli grinned at her.
“Now mind, you’ll have some problems with the lads when they hear about it, and I don’t want any nonsense. You’re not a yeoman-marshal yet; I’ll send you to—” And who would she send Erial to, who could be trusted? “—someone I trust,” she said finally. She would have to look up the rolls; they really needed a better way of training youngsters who might become Marshals. Cob would be best, but did he have an opening? “Go on,” she said. “I’ll be along after awhile to talk to your aunt and uncle about you.”
She sat at her desk, for once well content with her role as Marshal and a woman other women could come to. It wouldn’t always work out so neatly, any more than every loaf came from the oven with a perfect crust and crumb, but when it happened she could take pleasure in it. The next time she went to Fin Panir, she thought, she would bring up this matter of Marshals’ training with the Council.
Chapter Thirteen
Luap and the others had been back in Fin Panir only a few days when Raheli arrived. She wanted, she said, to see what progress Luap was making on the Life of Gird. He showed her the racked scrolls of notes, explained about the interviews.
“Did you get the ones I sent?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. You are the only source I have for his early life, you know. Can you tell me anything more about his childhood? Anything that would fit well?”
“Fit well?”
“You know—something that would show the reader that he was going to be what he became. That story about his brother dying of an attack by wolves—where was Gird then? What did he do?”
Rahi stared at him. “Arin went out with the hunters; he was the elder. Gird stayed—you know my grandparents were still alive then, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure.” Luap pulled out the scroll she had sent and looked. “No—all you said here was that Arin died, and Gird succeeded to the tenancy.”
Rahi frowned. “It’s more complicated than that. It was before I was born; Arin and his wife Issa and their children, and Gird and my mother Mali, lived with their parents. Gird’s and Arin’s. The eldest son in each cottage could be called out for a hunt; I don’t know if Arin had to go, or if he chose to, but he went with other men out to a distant sheepfold. When wolves came, he ran out after them; they tore him but were beaten off by others. Gird said when they brought him home, the steward came, and granted a sheep’s carcass to the family. Even remitted the death-duty. But within a year, his father died, and the cottage and all the family came to him. Issa and her children, his mother, his own children—for I was born later that year.”
“But Gird didn’t go out to hunt the wolf that killed his brother?”
“No—the other men had killed most of them. And he had to do the work Arin had done, as well as his own.”
“It would have made a better story,” Luap said.
Rahi gave him a strange look. “It’s not a singer’s tale,” she said. “It’s what really happened.”
“Another thing I don’t understand,” Luap said, avoiding that implied criticism, “is when he actually began working against the magelords. From what you’ve written, and from what I heard others say, his own liege was harsher than most, deliberately cruel.”