“Ho, there!” One of the guards stepped forward, lifting a torch to peer at their faces. “And who be you, coming in so late—don’t know your face!”
Gird opened his mouth, and found a name in it. “Amis of Barle’s village, m’lord, and m’father’s father Geris, come to pilgrimage at th’shrine.”
“Should’ve come earlier; the gate’s closed to outsiders.”
At this the old man mewled, an infantile wail of misery and disappointment. The guard grinned, insolent but not unkind. “Never seen anyone needed a miracle more, and that’s a fact. Got any honey to sweeten the sib, Amis of Barle’s?”
“Honey, m’lord?” Gird let his jaw hang down stupidly, and patted his “grandfather’s” hand. “We’s no bees, m’lord, that’s for them’s got orchard trees. But we’s barley-cake—” He fished in his jerkin for the stale end of barley cake he’d saved from breakfast, and offered it. Whatever was going on, he was supposed to pretend stupidity and meekness. The guardsman looked at him, long and steady, then pushed it back. “If that’s all you’ve had, coming in from so far, keep it. Now, gransire, we’ve had an upset today, and I’ll have to see your hands before you enter.”
“Hands?” asked Gird before he thought. The one on his arm squeezed hard, hard as a strong young man, and released him. The guard nodded.
“In case a thief tries to sneak back in,” he said. “He’s hand-branded, that one, and we’re to look at all strangers, especially those with one eye gone. I’m sure your gransire isn’t the thief, but I must look.” And he took each of the old man’s knotted hands, and looked at the palm. So did Gird—and saw nothing but old pink skin, marked by heavy work. The guard jerked his chin up. “Get on in, fellow, you and your gransire, and be sure you’re not up to any mischief this night. Beggars’ steps on the winter side of Hall, and no laying up in someone’s doorway.”
“Thanks, m’lord.” Gird found himself pulling his forelock before he thought of it, and edged by the guard with care for his companion.
Once through the town’s wall, the old man used his grip of Gird’s elbow to guide him toward the main square. The streets were busy yet, full of people who knew exactly where to go. Gird had his own directions from the gate, but he went where the old man wanted him to—he had no choice.
In the square, a few stalls still had shutters open. A bakery, its main doors closed, sold the remnants of the day’s baking out a broad window. From one stall came the sour smell of bad ale, from another the stomach-churning scent of hot oil and frying meat. Gird swallowed his hunger, and found that his tongue now responded to his own will.
“I’ve somewhere to go,” he said gruffly. “Can you find a safe place?”
“Better than you,” said the old man. “Could you have come through the gates alone?”
Gird grunted. Of course he couldn’t, not that late, but if it hadn’t been for the old man, he wouldn’t have been that late. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “You were hurt, you could hardly move—”
“We can’t stand here in the open talking,” said the old man. “I want my supper.” This last became a weak whine, suitable to the aged cripple he seemed to be, and Gird was not surprised to see a couple of guards walk by, scanning the faces as they went.
“I don’t have anything but that barley cake,” said Gird, and added unwillingly, as the guards paused, “Granther, you know that. It took all coppers we’s got to make this trip for your eye. Here—” He fished out the barley cake, and broke it, as the guards watched. The old man took his share in a shaky hand, almost whimpering in his eagerness. A drop of spittle ran down his chin into his beard, glittering in the guards’ torchlight.
“Beggars’ steps over there,” said one of the guards gruffly, gesturing across the square. Gird bobbed his head, hoping he looked stupid and harmless. The guards moved on, stopping to joke with the baker’s lass, as she reached to close the shutters at the window. The old man touched Gird’s arm, pushing him gently towards the beggars’ steps.
When they sank down on the lowest of the five steps, Gird stuffed his piece of barley cake back into his jerkin, and said again “I have somewhere I must go. Can you stay here? Will they find you?”
In the dimness, the old man’s face was suddenly more visible, as if a candle had been lit inside it. “Lad, I can stay here, or go, or stay with you, and they will not find me—have you seen nothing this evening?”
“Riddles,” said Gird. “You give me tricks and riddles—”
“I give you light in darkness.” The old man’s face shone brighter, then dimmed. “But the blind cannot see light, and think darkness is reality.”
Gird stirred on the cold step, not sure what he could say. The old man was mad, and no wonder, with what he’d been through. He must have been one of them—perhaps one of their elder mages—and he’d angered someone. They’d taken their revenge, and wrecked his mind as well as his body. Probably as bad as the rest of them, when he was whole, but now—“I need to go now,” he said, as gently as he could. “I’ll come back you.”
“Yes,” said the old man. “You will.” He bit off a chunk of the barley cake, and started chewing it. Gird watched a moment, feeling a strange confusion in his mind, then shook his head and got up.
The meeting place, when he finally found it, was a merchant’s storeroom crowded with nervous men, at least a dozen of them, and lit by two candles. He’d expected only the elders of the barton, but apparently others had insisted on coming. Was this a trap? He tried to see the corners of the storeroom as he gave the password again, but darkness lurked behind bales and boxes as if it were alive and twitching. His neck itched; he wanted to whirl and look behind himself, but he controlled that urge.
Calis, the only man he’d met before, limped forward to shake his arm and then grinned broadly at the rest. “I told you he’d come. Whatever happens, he’d come.”
“He’s late.” That was a square-built, black-bearded man, with a look of authority and the weathered face of someone out in the open most of his life.
“He’s here. That’s what counts.” Calis shook his arm again. “Lady bless you, Gird, for coming. You’ll lead us, eh? Make us free?”
Calis had not sounded that simple back in Harrow, when he visited that barton’s drill. Then he had seemed a possible leader, someone who could organize a barton, start its training. Gird looked around as calmly as he might, trying to figure out what had gone wrong here. Fifteen men, no women—that was still common enough, despite his urging. None very young: quite right, at such a secret meeting; young men talked too much. None very old. Four held themselves with a kind of furious rigidity: men used to command, perhaps, pretending a passivity they could not feel? Gird smiled at the black-bearded man. “Hurry makes the fleet fall, and the aim wide: I came as I might, to come safely.”
“You would preach safety in war?” That was another of the four he’d noted, a tall brown bear of a man leaning against the stacked boxes across from him.
“I preach nothing, being no priest. As Calis will have told you, I expect—” He glanced at Calis, whose gaze slid past him. So. Trouble indeed. “I teach what seems obvious to me, that wild rebellion against the king but causes death and torment.”
“And this is what we came for?” The brown man pushed away from the boxes to confront him. “We came to hear the same song the priests sing: obey, submit, seek peace from the Lady in your hour of death?”