“I can’t do that. The Marshal-General specified I was not to take so much as a clod from farmland or grangelands, only from waste ground.”
“Even if the Marshal offered?” Cob looked angry.
“That’s right, Marshal,” Binis said. Luap thought she would have been wise to hold her tongue. “That’s what I’m to do, watch to be sure he doesn’t take the wrong soil.”
Cob looked at her; Luap recognized the look Gird had given that other Binis and held his breath. But Cob was not drunk, as Gird had been; he merely shook his head. “I didn’t ask you,” he said. “And I don’t think that frog-eyed fool has the right to tell me what I can and can’t do with a bit of earth from my own drillfields. He wasn’t with Gird as long as I was.” It was exactly what Luap had hoped he would say, all the long, cold, miserable trip from Fin Panir, but now he felt a hollow open inside him. Cob meant what he said, and he could take his soil and go home—but that would leave Cob in a mess.
“No,” Luap said. “I didn’t come here to start a quarrel between you and the Marshal-General.”
“You didn’t start it,” Cob said, reddening. “That—” Luap was aware of Binis’s interest, her ears almost flapping wide on either side of her head. And Cob had been Gird’s friend, with Gird longer than almost anyone else still alive.
“No,” he said again, and let a little of his power bleed into it. On Gird it had not worked; on Cob and Binis it worked well. Both sat quiet and stared at him. “I will not disobey the Marshal-General’s orders on this, though I thank the friend who cared more to help me than advance himself.” Neither of them said anything, and he was afraid he had put too much power on them . . . but then Cob shook himself, like a wet dog.
“All right,” he said gruffly, not looking at Binis. “But I want you to know that I trust you. Now—where’s that boy with the food?” He got up and left the office to Luap and Binis. Luap stretched luxuriously. The fire’s warmth crept over him in exquisite waves; he could feel not only his throbbing feet, but a blanket-like warmth on his knees and thighs. He had not been this warm for days; the other Marshals had pushed Binis close to the fire. He glanced at her. One side of her face seemed flushed—from the fire or embarrassment, he could not guess.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked her.
“Did you really not have magicks for the cold?” she asked, without answering him.
“No,” Luap said. He was not really surprised at her question; from the little they’d talked he had discovered her to have a literal mind and a tenacious grasp of the trivial. “I’m glad of a fire,” he added, hoping this would divert her from the question he saw hovering on her lips. “If you are still cold, why not get a blanket?”
“I’m all right,” she said. “Are you really twice my age?”
She was so predictable. She would ask next if Meshi were really his friend, and if he had slept with her, and then why the mageborn had gone to his stronghold . . . and so on, no doubt for hours.
“I don’t know how old you are,” he said. She scowled at that, looking for trickery in it. “And I don’t really know my own years.” Which was not quite true, but saved discussing it. She scowled again, not because she detected a lie, but because she had not been answered.
“Is Meshi, that cook, really your friend?”
He uttered a silent prayer to any god who might be listening to bring Cob back into the room. She would go down the predictable list, and it would drive him to saying something he would regret. For the first time, he felt he really understood Gird’s rage that night in the forest. He answered all in a rush. “Yes, she’s my friend; we met during the war. And she’s not my lover and never has been, just as she said when you asked her.”
Binis looked shocked; Luap stared her down. Cob came in, followed by Vrelan with a kettle wrapped in cloths, which he unwrapped and put on the hearth. “Better stew than I make; the inn’s cook has the true parrion. And new bread, and a pot of custard.”
“Marshal-General says Marshals should make their own meals,” Binis said primly. Luap closed his eyes a moment. Didn’t she realize—? Cob merely grunted, though his yeoman-marshal stared at Binis as if she’d sprouted green horns.
“I’ve cooked enough meals in Gird’s army to last me, yeoman-marshal. When there’s a good cook, who knows what she’s doing, and needs the trade, I’m not going to eat lumpy porridge and soggy bread to please someone as won’t get out of bed before midday. Gird could’ve milked a herd and ploughed two fields before Koris finishes breakfast.” He dished out stew for everyone, breathing a little hard, and handed Binis her bowl with a stare. “And you go ahead and tell him, Binis, all I’ve said—he knows how I feel about him, and I know how he feels about me. But when all’s said and done, he knows who fought beside Gird from the first day. I didn’t want to be Gird’s successor, but it was offered me. He had to argue his way into it.”
Binis turned redder than the fire could explain, and ate her stew without looking up. Luap burned his mouth on the first bite, and slowed down. Cob was right—the cook had a parrion. Mutton stew could be almost as bad as lumpy porridge, but this had a savor he liked. Cob pushed over a half-loaf of bread and a dish of butter.
“You spoil me,” Luap said, carefully not looking at Binis.
“No—we eat this well almost every day.” Cob buttered a hunk of bread for himself and stuffed it in his mouth. Luap winced inwardly. He liked Cob, but the man had never acquired even as much polish as Gird. When he had refused the Marshal-General’s position, he had apparently returned to his rural grange determined to be as much a peasant as possible.
Vrelan, meanwhile, sat in the corner opposite Binis, eating as rapidly as any hungry young man just past boyhood. He smiled shyly at Luap when their eyes met. He will want tales, Luap thought to himself. He will want stories of Gird, and stories of my distant land—he’s got those dreamer’s eyes.
Cob swallowed, then belched. “So—tell me, Luap, is that land what you hoped it would be?”
Luap nodded, and swallowed the stew in his mouth. “Yes—although it’s even colder than this. I’ve never seen snow so deep. Luckily we need not travel in it, and the stronghold itself doesn’t freeze. Though it’s not really warm, either.”
“Magic, is it?” This with a quick sidelong glance at Binis.
“No, the elves said it was the depth of stone. It stays about the same all year.” Luap scooped up more stew before it cooled. His feet had quit throbbing and he felt almost sleepy. “We spent the time before snow building terraces,” he went on. “Piled the rock up, had Arranha telling us how to level them.”
“I thought you’d just level the valley floor,” Cob said. “Isn’t it a small valley?”
“Small and steep. Not just the sides, the floor as well. Level the whole thing and the new floor would be halfway up the mountains at the low end.” Not quite, but it made a vivid image; Cob nodded, mouth pursed. “So we’re doing smaller terraces, none more than three men high at the low end. Most less than that—it’d take too much soil to fill them otherwise.”
“A lot of work,” Cob said. “And so few of you—I suppose you found a way to use your magicks?”
Luap grinned at him. Cob would not demand, from a friend, but he was as curious as anyone else. “Yes, we did, though it still takes a lot of sweat and blisters. I must admit, it’s good to see magery used the right way, for breaking stones and not people. And it keeps the few with magery too busy for mischief.”
Cob shot another glance at Binis, who had finished her stew and was munching the end of a loaf of bread. “When you’ve finished, yeoman-marshal, you and Vrelan take back this pot and then check the horses. You can trust me not to let Luap out of my sight.” His tone was pleasant but firm; she could neither resent that order, nor disobey it. Cob turned to Vrelan, “Since we have guests, get us a pot of their good ale, and see if they’ll send a loaf of bread fresh from the morning baking.” He gave the yeoman-marshal a few coins. Binis and Vrelan went out with the kettle, one cheerful and one scowling. When the outer door had shut behind them, Cob turned to Luap.