“Getting her trained, eh? Using your charm on her?”
Luap winced and shrugged. “Don’t say that; it sounds bad. And you know better. She rides better.”
“She needed to.” Cob looked him up and down. “And you could use some exercise, after days spent in the saddle, I daresay. Work out the stiffness, remind your legs what they’re for?”
Luap groaned. “You—you’re as bad as Gird himself. All right.” He put off his cloak, loosened his belt, and joined the others. He had not really drilled in a long time; he had lost, he discovered, the suppleness he had had in youth and he could feel the tightness in his legs every time he leaned over.
But he recognized Cob’s purposes. His yeomen might remember the man who had helped Cob in the blizzard . . . they would certainly remember the man who drilled with them, claiming no special place. He caught the sidelong looks; some of them knew his name. When Binis came in from putting up the horses, Cob asked her to lead the stick drill as if she were his own yeoman-marshal. Luap saw resignation and grudging respect on her face. She proved to be a reasonably good drill leader. Luap had not drilled with sticks in years; his palms soon felt hot. But he was determined not to quit, not with Binis leading. Cob limped around, giving advice to all, until he came to Luap.
“Take a breather; you’re as old as I am, and this is young man’s work.”
Luap glared at him, half-amused and half-angry. “You got me into this.”
“So I did, but I don’t want you going back bloody-handed. I’d forgotten about the burn scars. You never did develop good calluses after that, did you?”
“Not on the one hand, no.” Luap stopped, loosened his grip, and flexed his fingers. That would hurt in the morning; it hurt now. Cob took his hands and looked at them, lips pursed.
“Lucky we’ve a cold stream. Just wait for me.” He stumped up to the front of the grange. “Binis, I want you and Vrelan to have them pair off for fighting drills. No broken bones, but a few raps in the ribs won’t hurt my yeomen.” Binis looked at Luap, and Cob turned to her. “You may not know it, yeoman-marshal, but in the war he had both hands burned. And you don’t build callus on burn scars—I saw him try, in the war. Gird himself finally told him to drill only as much as his scars would bear. If you want to argue that—” He looked as dangerous as he ever had, Luap thought, a man sure of himself and his place in the world.
“No, Marshal,” Binis said.
“Just keep in mind . . . Gird didn’t say pain was good, only that getting good usually involved pain. Those aren’t the same thing.”
“Yes, Marshal.” A dark flush mounted up her face; Cob put his hand on her shoulder.
“Sorry. We veterans can be rough-tongued; if I didn’t think you knew what you were doing, I wouldn’t let you supervise section drills.” He gave her a little shake and came back to Luap. “Come on, now; we’re getting those hands in cold water.”
“You should have been a healer,” Luap said. Cob had insisted that he keep his hands in cold springwater until his bones ached; then he’d put a salve on the worst places, and given Luap soft rags to wrap around his hands.
“I wish I were,” Cob said. “You know, young Seri insisted that all Marshal-candidates learn something of herblore and healing. . . . I wish the gods would grant us just a bit of Aris’s talent.”
“I wish the gods would give everyone Aris’s talent,” Luap said. “He’s always busy—too busy—and even working all day every day he can’t possibly heal all he’d like.”
“Is there no way to misuse it?” Cob asked. “Of course I don’t accuse Aris—I know Aris—but if everyone had the power, could it be misused?”
Luap shook his head. “I don’t see how. It can’t be hoarded for self-healing; Aris can heal his own injuries, but it’s painful, as is withholding healing from others. Aside from healing someone the gods want to call—Aris told me about a child kicked in the head, whom he healed but who never completely recovered—I don’t see how anyone could misuse it. That doesn’t happen often.”
“Perhaps you’re right. I know we need more healers, more who can do what Aris does. Herblore has its place, but it can’t cure many things.” Cob turned away a moment, rummaged in a basket, and came up with a lump of soil. “Here now—smell this, and see what you think.”
Luap sniffed. It smelled earthy, alive, the way soil should smell. It was a dark, heavy clod, more clay than loam, but it would mix with the sand in the canyons, he was sure. “Good,” he said. “In fact, better than good. Where’s it from?”
“Southeast. Unclaimed land between granges, just as the Marshal-General required. I’ve found a cart and stout horse you can hire, although how you’re going to get them into your cave . . .”
“I gave up on that,” Luap said. “I’ll take a sackful, or maybe two, on a pack animal. I can drag the sacks into position by myself.” Or he could travel the mageroad alone, and bring back someone from the other end to help, but he did not tell Cob that. “We’ll see what Arranha’s mathematics does. According to him, we could start with this single clod.”
“Good. We’ll start in the morning, if that’s all right with you.” Cob leaned back in his chair. “Binis seems a bit less touchy this time.”
Luap shrugged. “She’s fine. The winter trip was my fault; it would have made anyone difficult.”
“No—there you wrong yourself. You’ve never been one to complain about that kind of thing. But we’ll see in the morning.”
They arrived at Cob’s chosen site, a meadow already greening, with new grass and pink flowers peeking through the dead grass of winter, by nightfall. Binis looked around. “Are you sure no one claims this, Marshal?”
“Very sure. I checked with the next Marshal over. There’s a village blasted by magery between us, fields poisoned and dead, so there are fewer people than some years back, and neither of our granges spread this direction. This is just outside the dead zone, but you can see the land is well alive. Luap?”
Luap dismounted and dug his dagger into the turf, bringing up a small lump of thick dark soil. It smelled rich and fertile. “It’s perfect,” he said. He pulled out the two sacks he’d bought, and unlashed the shovels from the pack pony’s saddle.
“You’re not going to dig it now,” Cob said.
“We’re camping here, aren’t we?” Luap asked. He grinned wickedly at Cob. “What was the first thing Gird taught all of us?”
“You give Vrelan that shovel and help me cook,” Cob said. “I trust your cooking.”
The next morning, Vrelan and Binis—she surprised Luap by offering—dug another narrow trench to fill the sacks with earth. “I know it’s harder this way,” Luap had said, “but a narrow trench will quickly heal; we don’t want to leave the land open to harm.” Soon they were done; Luap nicked his finger to produce a drop of blood which he squeezed into the trench. Binis stared at him, and he explained. “Alyanya’s blessed me; when I was a farmer, I blooded my blade like everyone else.”
They returned to Cob’s grange that night, and the next day Luap and Binis set off for the cave, more than a hand of days away. He felt almost smug about surprising her with his willingness to drill, to dig a jacks trench, to offer his own blood in return for the earth. “I thought you would destroy all the old ways,” she said as they rode. “Our old ways, I mean.”
“Did you ever meet Arranha?” Luap countered. She looked blank. “The priest of Esea in the High Lord’s Hall?”
“That old man in the white robe? No. They said he was a magelord who followed the Sunlord. That’s what the war was against, magelords and bad gods.”
Luap closed his eyes, fighting off a wave of anger. How could she be that ignorant, that stupid? “Arranha,” he said between clenched teeth, “helped Gird fight that war. Arranha is the one who took Gird to the gnomes. You do know about that?”