Gird looked over to see how Mesha was taking this; the young man’s face was sober, neither angry nor disapproving.
“Never think the troubles of peasants are little ones, Mesha. Hunger gnaws at you; the hunger of your family, of your children, hurts worse than your own. To feel the winter wind strike through ragged clothes, to have no fire in the house, and then the steward comes, smelling of meat and new-baked bread, to demand a special tax because the lord’s courting a lady, or his lady has had a child, that’s the bad part of it. Our lord, Kelaive, said peasants were lazy cowards: said it with his plump belly full of food we raised, with his well-fed soldiers around him, and we listened, shivering in a cold wind, or baked by summer sun. The steward said we should understand his greater problems. Greater than hunger? Greater than cold, than sickness, with healing herbs denied? Can there be worse than choosing which child shall have a crust of bread?” He could say no more; he felt the blood beating in his ears, the breath storming through his lungs.
“I’m sorry,” Mesha said.
“It’s all right,” said Gird, blindly walking on.
“It is not, and it is not right that I did not know.” Mesha sounded angry now, and not with Gird. “My father is a better man than that. I know it.” But Gird heard the uncertainty in his voice.
“I hope so,” he said, carefully making his voice light and easy. “As you will be.”
“I would tell you of things my father has done, but I see now that it is not enough, not for me. I must know how our people live. He has asked me before to take over a village, but I wouldn’t—”
Gird was surprised to find himself relaxed again, “You are young, Mesha. When I was young, I did not look for pain. I trained as a guard under that very steward—not looking, not seeing. My family—I thought they were fools, and I would show them all. After all, as a guard I ate their food, wore their clothes, brought money home—real coppers—to my father. And boasted of it. That’s what hurt worst, later—that I had boasted, while my sisters and brothers went hungry and I was full.”
“You—you do not hate me?” That was a boy’s voice, a boy’s naked desire to have an older man’s respect.
“No. I do not hate you, or even—by this time—Kelaive. I hate what made Kelaive greedy and cruel, what made my father cringe before even his steward, what has kept you—who would, I daresay, be just and generous if you could—from knowing what you need to know.” Gird smiled at the young man’s worried face. “Be at peace, Mesha, while you can; long life brings enough battles to every man’s door.”
Once he crossed the border into Finaarenis, Gird began arranging transportation for the promised pikes. It would have been easier to sneak them across country before the summer’s war erupted; the gnomes had advised him to go to Marrakai first. But he wasted little energy on regret. Before the leaves fell, all his pikes were over the border.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Meanwhile, his people told him, the war had hardly slowed for harvest. The king’s army had split, one column going to Blackbone Hill, where they found only ruin. The other had started west along the River Road, but when it reached the lands controlled by Sier Segrahlin, the sier had refused the king’s army passage. Rumor had it that the king and the sier would not mend their quarrel, whatever it had been, until an enemy army lay at the gates of Finyatha.
“We could arrange that,” said Gird, laughing.
“Could you?” Arranha, to Gird’s surprise, had come to Brightwater. He wore the same face Gird remembered, and seemed content to live with Gird’s army and to endure the nervous glances of the other yeomen who distrusted anyone who had been a lord.
“We must someday,” Gird said. “But having fought the sier, I would prefer not to do it again, if we can avoid it.”
Arranha smiled at him. “You are acquiring prudence, then? I thought he might give you trouble. If his powers last, if he is not killed by a rock falling on his head, or lung-fever—”
“Can he be killed so? When my bowmen aimed at lords, the arrows flew astray.”
“As I understand that form of magic—and it is not my own—one must know of the attack to defend against it, like a man holding up a shield over his head. If someone surprises him, he has only the strength of his bone.”
Arranha had brought additional reminders and suggestions from the gnomes. “Not free gifts of information, you understand. I was told that they consider this to fall under the original contract; they’re pleased with what you accomplished at Blackbone Hill.”
Gird snorted. “They damn nearly got us killed at Blackbone Hill; they didn’t tell me what they were doing, or that they’d been talking to the miners—”
Arranha laughed gently. “But you survived.”
Another surprise of that homecoming was Selamis. After Gird had scolded him for not letting go his aristocratic background, he had seemed to fit in better. Once more, he was almost unnoticeable. Gird had begun to make use of his special knowledge, taking it for granted that Selamis would know which lord was related to whom, and what the news the traders brought meant. But until he left for Marrakai’s domain, the other marshals had still been wary of Selamis. Several had come to him privately, and asked him not to make Selamis a marshal, or give him command. Gird had had no intention of doing that anyway. Now, however, they all seemed at ease with him. The marshals had discovered how handy it was to have someone able and willing to write and keep accounts—and someone whose face everyone knew, but who had no actual command. Selamis, Gird heard with some surprise, had stopped a street brawl—and he had patched up a quarrel between two of the newer marshals—and he had convinced the ranking merchants that the Brightwater yeoman-marshal was worth hearing.
“I thought you were crazy,” Ivis said, on Gird’s first night back. “A lord’s son, troublemaker in his village—I know, you said he wasn’t, but we had one in our village and you never did. Now—he’s not that bad. You know what Cob’s been calling him?”
Cob leaned over and punched Ivis. “Hush. Gird won’t approve.”
“What, then?”
“Luap,” said Ivis, snorting with glee. “You know—the lords’ own term for a bastard who can’t inherit. Rank but no power. Cob’s been calling him our luap.”
Gird looked hard at Cob, who had the grace to blush. “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said defensively. “He’s the one taught me the word, and made a joke about it. Spends all his time with us high-ranking folk, marshals and you, and has no command of his own. So I took it up, and he just grinned.”
“Joke or not, I don’t like it.”
“Why not?” That came from the subject of discussion himself, who flung a leg over the bench, clapped Gird hard on the shoulder, and faced him squarely. “No one’s ever liked the name my father gave me: you said yourself Selamis was a strange name. I am a luap: my father’s bastard, and your trusted assistant in all but command. They’ll tell you I’ve practiced, and learned fighting, but I’m still best at keeping accounts.”