Chapter Eighteen
The next morning was cold and raw but Arranha was awake, and a milder warmth filled their shelter. Gird rubbed his eyes, and looked out to see snow covering all, under a gray sky: the light was silvery. The old man sat hunched, staring at his hands. Gird watched him warily. Was he about to do something? Was he doing something now, something Gird could not see? Then a cramp in his back jabbed him, and he had to stretch. Arranha turned to him, and Gird continued with a yawn that cracked his jaws.
“Sorry,” he said afterwards, but even to himself he did not sound sorry. Arranha merely smiled. Silently, he divided the rest of the bread and cheese, and Arranha shared it. The jug, when he shook it, was full. He looked at the old man, who smiled again.
“I filled it with snow, and melted it. It’s not ale, but it will do.” Gird sipped, found it water with only the faintest taste of the ale that had been in the jug, and drank thirstily. Arranha went on. “It is not snowing now, and I think it will not for some hours. If you wanted to travel, now is a good time.”
Gird scratched his jaw beneath his beard. “What about you? I would help you to someplace safe.”
Arranha laughed aloud. “Safe? For me? Gird, I am safer with you than anywhere else I can think of, in the world of men.”
“But surely you have friends—”
“None so rash as to harbor me now, when Esea’s Hall of priests has declared me heretic and traitor. They intended to kill me, Gird—you saw that.”
“But—sir—” Gird tried to think how to put it. The man was a priest, and had great powers, but he would hardly be accepted by Gird’s troop of peasant rebels. He began as delicately as he could. “I have my work—you seem to know that, and what it is—and the people I work with, my people, they—they won’t take to you.”
Arranha showed neither anger nor surprise. “You do not want me with you?”
Gird found he was scratching his ear, this time. “Well—it’s nothing against you yourself, but—you’re one of them, sir. One of the lords, and that’s who we’re trying to fight. Sir.”
“Do you know what you’re fighting for, Gird, or is it all against?” Gird must have looked as puzzled as he felt, for Arranha explained. “Do you have a vision of something better, a way to live that you want, or are you fighting only against the lords’ injustice and cruelty?”
“Of course we have ideas,” Gird said. They were bright in his mind, those pictures of what the world should be like. He was sitting at the old scarred table in his own cottage, with Mali and the children around it, all of them with food in their bowls, laughing and talking. In the cowbyre were his three favorite cows, all healthy and sleek; his sheep were heavy-fleeced and strong. He could look around the room and see his mother’s loom with a furl of cloth half-woven, tools on their hooks, Mali’s herbs in bunches, the sweet smell of a spring evening blowing in the window. Outside would be the fields, with the grain springing green from the furrows, the smallgarden already showing the crisp rosettes of vegetables, the beans reaching for their poles with waving tendrils. From other cottages as well he could hear the happy voices, even someone singing. He felt safe; he knew the others felt safe. That was what he wanted, what they all wanted.
“Can you tell me?” asked Arranha gently.
Gird tried, but the memories were too strong, too mixed: sweet and bitter, joyful and sorrowful, all at once. His voice broke; his eyes filled with tears that were hot on his cheeks, and cold on his jaw. “It’s just—just peace,” he said.
Arranha sighed. “Coming to peace by starting a war is tricky, Gird. You’ve never known war; I have.”
Gird set his jaw, and blinked back the tears. “It’s war enough, when my family and my friends die for nothing.”
“No. It’s bad, but it’s not the same. You’re starting something bigger than you can see. Much bigger. You need a better idea of where you’re going, what you will need. Do you know anything at all about law?”
Gird sniffed, rubbed his nose on his arm, and thought about it. Law. There were the customs of his village, and the customs all his people shared, from the days when they lived in steadings within a hearthing. Then there were rules the lords made, and that law he had had to memorize when he was a recruit. “A little,” he said cautiously. Arranha looked at him, as if wondering what that meant, and sighed again.
“This is going to take longer, and it would go better in a warmer place. Where would you go from here?”
The abrupt change of topic jarred; Gird wondered what the old man was up to. Something, surely. But he was tired of arguing, of his own emotions. Let the old man come along, at least for now. “We left the city by the east gate,” Gird said. “And then we walked east, and then south but only a little. So back south, and a little west—I don’t know this country well, up here.”
“The way you’re speaking of, there’s a village called Burry—is that what you meant?”
“Aye.” In Burry, the barton was already five hands strong, and the yeoman marshal had relatives in three other villages.
“Can we reach Burry today?”
“No. But there’s a place—” Gird did not want to talk about it, and Arranha did not press him. He ducked out of the shelter, into the distanceless light of a cloudy day over snow. They were going to leave tracks, clear ones, and the place they had slept would be obvious even if he tried to take down the shelter. But he could not see the road from here, or hear any travelers. Perhaps no one would happen by until another snowfall.
He led Arranha further into the wood, away from the road. The silence scared him; it felt unnatural. He reminded himself that he was not used to being away from a village in winter. Even near camp, he could hear the noises of other people. It might be nothing but this unfamiliarity that had his neck hair standing up, a tension in his shoulders. Arranha picked his way through the snow with little apparent effort, though he left tracks. Gird made sure to look, every so often.
When they came to the trail Gird had taken toward the city two days before, he almost walked across it without recognition. Its white surface lay smooth in both directions, trackless. He turned and led Arranha along it, as he looked for the place they could shelter overnight.
It was getting darker, and he was afraid he might not recognize it in snow, when he spotted the three tall cedars above a lower clump, and turned off the trail. Arranha had said nothing for hours. Now he said, “Is this a village?”
“No—it’s an old steading. Cleared by your folk, to settle a village.” He wasn’t sure that was why it had been abandoned; it might have been much older than the lords’ coming. “It’s empty,” Gird added. “No one lives here, or nearby.” He pushed through the bushy cedar boughs, shivering as they dumped their load of snow on him, and entered the old steading. He bowed, courteously, to the old doorstep, still centered between the upright pillars that had held the door. On either side, broken walls straggled away, outlining the shape of the original buildings in brushstrokes of stone against the white snow.
When he looked back, Arranha had pushed through the cedars as well, and was bowing as Gird had, though he looked uncertain of his welcome. So he ought, Gird thought. This was old; this had belonged to no one but his own people, and Arranha was a stranger.
“Do you know how many lived here?” Arranha asked.
Gird shook his head. “It was a steading; my Da said a steading was three or so families. Less than a village—four hands, five? A large steading might have more, but I think this one was small.” He led the way again, past the empty useless doorway, along what had been the outside of the main building, to an angle of low wall in what had been an animal shed or pen. Here two corners had survived the original assault and subsequent weather, to nearly enclose a space just over an armspan wide, and two armspans long. Gird thrust his hand into the cold snow in the larger space outside, feeling about, and grunted. “Here—help me lift this.” This was a lattice, woven of green withes and vines, and lightly covered with leaves; it would have been unnoticeable lying flat among the ruins. Now, it fitted across the space between the walls, an instant roof.