The old man, eating more slowly, had not finished; he swallowed the cheese in his mouth before answering. “Gird, among my people the customs differ. Offering food is the sign of subservience: servants offer food to masters. I’m afraid when your people came bringing food, my people thought they were acknowledging their lower rank.”
Gird sat quietly a moment, thinking this over. The food-bringers, food-givers, ranked lower? When everyone knew that those who can afford to give without taking in return are the wealthy and strong? It was backwards, upside down, inside out: no one could live with a people who believed that. They would kill each other. They would believe—that the strong and wealthy are those who can take without giving—He found he was saying this aloud, softly, and the old man was nodding. “But that’s wrong,” he said loudly. His vehemence was swallowed in the snow, lost in that white quiet. “It can’t work. They would always be stealing from each other, from everyone, to gain their place in the family.”
“Not quite,” said the old man. He sighed heavily. “Then again, maybe that’s part of the reason why things have gone so badly up here. Back in Aare, there were reasons for that, and safeguards. At least, I think so. It had to do with our magic, our powers.”
“Like the light. And cooking with your finger?”
“Among other things, yes. Among our people, rank came with magic—the more magic, the higher rank. One proof of magic was the ability to take, either by direct magic, or by compelling—charming—someone to offer whatever it was as a gift.”
Gird thought carefully around that before he let himself answer, but it was the same answer that sprang first to mind. “But how is that different from the bullying of a strong child, who steals a weaker’s food, or threatens him into giving it up? It is stealing, to take like that.” And it was precisely what the lords had been doing, he thought. What they had always done, if this man was telling the truth.
The old man also waited before answering, and when he spoke his voice was slower, almost hesitant. “Gird, our people see it as the natural way—as calves in a herd push and shove, seeking dominance, as kittens wrestle, claw and bite. Yet this doesn’t mean constant warfare in a herd, only a mild pushing and shoving: the weaker ones know their place, and walk behind—”
“But men are not cows!” Gird could not contain his anger any longer; he felt as if it were something physical, bright as the light he still did not understand. “We are not kittens, or sheep, or birds squabbling in a nest—”
“I know.” The old man’s voice, still quiet, cut through his objection as a knife cuts a ripe fruit. “I know, and I know something has gone very wrong. But in our own home, in Aare, that sparring for dominance among our folk had its limits, and those limits were safe enough to let our people grow and prosper for many ages. We were taught—I was taught—that with such power comes great responsibility—that we were to care for those we governed as a herdsman cares for his herd—No, don’t tell me, I understand. Men are not cattle. But even you might use that analogy—”
And he had, the night before, talking to the sier. Gird shivered, not from cold, when he thought of it. No wonder it had gone home, if the man thought of his common folk as cattle already.
“I still think it’s wrong,” Gird said.
“It may be. But right or wrong, it’s the other way ’round from your people, and that means my people didn’t understand them from the beginning. We assumed your people intended to submit, agreed to it without conflict: that’s what our chronicles say. So whenever your people resisted, our people thought of that as a broken contract—as if you had gone back on your word.”
Gird tried to remember what he had heard of the lords’ coming. Very little, though he had heard new things from the men he had been training. Most of the stories began after that, with the settlements growing near the new forts and towns, with the “clearing” of old steadings, the forced resettlement of families, the change in steading custom to conform to the new village laws. Everyone had thought the lords knew they were unfair, knew they were stealing—but had they not known? Had they thought that all they did was right, justified by some agreement that had never been made?
“Not all,” the old man said. “Some things were forbidden in old Aare, which our people do here. The worship of the Master of Torments, for example: that they know is evil, and those who do it are doing it knowingly against the old laws. A contest of strength or magery is one thing, but once it is over, the winner has obligations to the loser, as well. But the basic misunderstanding, Gird, I believe I discovered tonight, from you. Your way seems as strange to me, I confess, as mine must seem to you—but strangeness is not evil. What we do with it may be evil.”
“When you offered me that food,” Gird said, “were you then declaring yourself lower in rank? Or were you trying to fool me into thinking that’s what you were doing?”
The old man started to answer, then stopped, then finally said, “I thought—I think I only meant to calm you, to make you think well of me. In one sense, that is claiming a lower rank, because it means I care that you think well of me—in another—I don’t know. I didn’t think, I just did it.”
“I felt,” Gird said carefully—carefully, because he did not want to hurt this old man, even now, “I felt like a stubborn animal, being offered a bait of grain if it will only go through the gap.”
A grin, across that close space. “You are stubborn; you would not deny that. I did not mean you to feel that, but given what your people think about offering food, wouldn’t anyone feel so in such a circumstance? Have you ever—”
“Yes.” Had the men he had fed felt that way? Demeaned, degraded? But it was not always so; he had taken food himself, gladly, acknowledging temporary weakness. Sick men had to be fed by healthy men, children by adults, infants by mothers. Was milk from the breast demeaning to a baby? Of course not. Yet—he worried the problem in his mind, coming at it from one side then another. The old man sat quietly and let him alone. “There are times,” he said, “when it is right to be the one fed. Times no one minds. If someone’s sick or hurt—or children—but grown folk, healthy grown folk—they feed themselves. In a way, living on another’s bounty is like being a child again. Maybe that’s why it means giving obedience.”
“Probably.” The old man nodded. “It’s interesting that you have the importance of having food to give, but absolute prohibition against taking it by force from each other. The force is used against the land, I suppose, in hunting or farming.”
“Not against,” Gird corrected. “With. To help the land bear more. Alyanya is our Lady, not our subject.”
“So you see even the gods as those who can give, not those who take?”
“Of course. If they have nothing to give, they are not gods, but demons.” Gird nodded at the cold dark beyond their shelter. “As the cold demons steal warmth, and the spirits of night steal light from the sun.”
The old man smiled. “This day is stealing my strength, Gird, and I cannot hold this light much longer. Not if I’m to have warmth enough until dawn. But before the light goes. I have an apology. I have withheld the courtesy of my name, although I knew yours. I am Arranha, and I am glad to have you as companion in this adventure.”
Gird turned the name over in his mind; it was like nothing he had heard. “I thought the lords had many names—four or five.”
“So they do, but priests have only one, and mine is Arranha.” With a last smile, Arranha let the light fail—the light Gird had yet to understand, and the cold, snow-clean air gusted for a moment under the shelter. Gird felt Arranha curling up in his leafy nest, and thought of walking away. But he could not blunder through a wood in the dark and snow, not and hope to live until morning. With a silent but very definite curse, he lay down, wriggling his way into the leaves until he was curled around Arranha. His back was cold, but Arranha, protected on the inside, was warm as a hearth. Gird was sure he could not sleep—then began to worry that they might sleep their way into death in the cold—and then slid effortlessly into peace and darkness.