He went as warily as he could, aware that he now had two sets of enemies: when Gadilon found out about his patrol, these hills would hum with soldiery, but at the same time the brigands would not be happy to find a real Gird in their midst. By midday, he had put a good distance between himself and the site of the brigand attack, but he felt no safer. The gnomish maps told him that he needed to cross all Gadilon’s domain, south to north, then open sheep pastures shared between several lords and peasant villages, before he would be back in territory he knew by sight. The nearest barton—as of the previous fall, he reminded himself—was a group of shepherds who called their settlement Farmeet.
His most direct route took him across a trade road that connected Gadilon’s towns with those in Tsaia to the east and Ierin, the most southwesterly town in Finaarenis. The gnomes had pointed out that he must, eventually, control traffic on this road in order to secure either southern quadrant of the realm. Like the River Road, along the southern bank of the Honnorgat in the north, the southern trade road allowed the lords to move soldiers and supplies easily from one fortified town to another. Gird himself found moving across country easier, but the gnomes had insisted that no organized army could travel like a single man or a small group.
Gird made it to the road with only one more close brush with a patrol (he had hidden in a dense cedar as the men rode by underneath, discussing the deaths of their friends in the ambush Gird had seen. He was dismayed to find that they assumed peasants had done it—and that the peasants and brigands were in league.) Now he peered from a thick growth of plums, all white with bloom, at a rutted track that seemed deserted. A horseman had ridden by sometime before; he’d heard the hoofbeats, and he could see fresh tracks overlying older ones. He leaned forward a little, shivering the plums, and the bees in the blossoms lifted with a whine to their buzz. Bees didn’t bother him (he wondered where their hive was), but he still could not tell if anyone was on the other side, watching. The soldiers had said something about closing the trade road, keeping the peasants from using it or crossing it. That would take sentries all along the way—surely they weren’t doing that—but he would hate to take an arrow in the neck finding out.
Something chuffed, across the track. Gird held very still. A deer burst through the plums there, paused in the track, ears wide and tail high, and chuffed again. Even as Gird heard the snap of a bowstring, an arrow thunked into the deer and it staggered, limped a stride, and fell awkwardly. Three men dressed alike crashed through the undergrowth, lashed the deer’s carcass to a pole, and disappeared back into the wood on the far side of the road, without a glance toward Gird. Their silent cooperation convinced Gird that they worked together constantly, but he had no idea whether they were foresters, soldiers, or brigands. Or, for that matter, poaching peasants. He could hear their progress through the wood; taking a chance that anyone else watching would be attracted by that noise, he darted across the road and into the trees, then swung wide of their path.
He wished he dared speak to them. That archer had been powerful and accurate; that’s what the gnomes said he needed. If those were peasants, poaching deer, then he might find a useful follower. More likely an arrow, he reminded himself. Too risky.
He made it safely to Farmeet, only to find the shepherds far less outgoing than he remembered from the summer before.
“I heard you was taking on Gadilon’s patrols,” said one of the shepherds, not quite looking at Gird. “Heard as you come on ’em sleeping, and killed ’em lying there, and took their clothes and all . . .”
“No,” said Gird. “That was brigands.”
“How’d you know?” They were all very still, sitting hunched as shepherds do, their long crooks angling up over their shoulders.
“I was there, hiding from the soldiers, when the brigands came.” They said nothing, but he could feel their disbelief. It was unlikely, he had to admit; to such as these, unlikely was nearly the same as impossible. Only a complete story would do; they would suspect anything less. Keeping his voice low and matter-of-fact, he told it all, from first sighting the sentry to laying mint on the bodies.
“Good you did that,” said the oldest shepherd, nodding. “Shows respect to the Lady, that do. Proper to do it for both sides, too.”
“They said they was you?” asked another.
Gird nodded. “They did, and they meant it to confuse both Gadilon’s men and our people.”
“We heard things this past winter.” The oldest shepherd poked the fire. “You’d gone down to the underworld, we heard. Talked to that one—has the horned circle, you know what I mean?”
“Liart—” breathed Gird.
“Aye. No good, that one. Them’s follows him likes hurting. Our lord’s got some like that in his service. Heard you made bargain with ’im, anyhow. That’s where you were, eh? Is it?”
“No.” Gird wondered where that story had come from, the lords or the brigands or simple imagination. “No, I was with the kapristi—the gnomes, the little rockfolk.”
“Ah. They’re not his followers, what I hear.”
“No. They follow the High Lord; I went to them to learn about law—what’s wrong with the lords’ law, and what might replace it.”
A younger shepherd spat. “Anyone can see what’s wrong with the lords’ law—it don’t take muckin’ about underground to see that.”
“Hush, Dikka. This’ll be more, what Gird’s talkin’ about.”
“When this war’s over,” Gird began, hoping they could think that far ahead, “we’ll have to have fair laws, if we’re to have peace. Most of our people don’t remember how it was before the lords came. What we do now’s a mix of our old customs and their laws—it makes no sense, as anyone can see—you’re right there. But what to do about it—that’s something else.”
“And you saw beyond the war, to the peace? Ah, that’s good.” The oldest shepherd finally turned to look directly at Gird. “You want the peace, do you? And not just the fighting?”
“That’s right.”
“And you know a fair law for all of us then, when it’s over?”
Gird shook his head. “I know a way to devise such a law—but it will mean many of us working on it. You, too, perhaps.”
“Not me—but I’ll be glad to think on it, that someone is. So you’ve naught to do with the horned chain?”
“No.” He let it stand baldly, like that; they looked at him a long moment, then all nodded.
The oldest shepherd said, “You have an honest look, and nothing that fits one of the horned chain worshippers. So I say—” gathering the others with his eyes. “I say he is Gird, and not that fellow as stopped by a hand of days ago, claiming Gird’s name and asking our help.”
“What!” They had said nothing of this before. The old man grinned, showing the gaps in his teeth.
“Aye—another Gird was here, if we believed him, which we didn’t. Big fellow, like you in that. Grinned a lot with plenty of teeth. Said that great powers was with him—and us if we joined him—and the lords would be cast down and trampled in the dust. Our sheep’d grow fat and have golden fleece, the way he told it—you’d think he’d been talking to the Master Shepherd and not the Master of Torments.”
“So what did you do?” asked Gird, fascinated. The shepherds all chuckled.
“Do? We’s no more’n stupid old shepherds, lad. Us can’t think o’ none but sheep and wool—can’t make an onion from a barleycorn, nor sheep of mice, no more’n make soldiers of th’ likes o’ us, can you now?” The exaggeration of their accents was so pronounced that Gird found himself grinning; they grinned back, well pleased with his reaction. “He wanted a barton here; we said we’s no barton—we’s shepherds, not farmfolk. He says what’s Farmeet, then, as he’s been told it’s a barton—and we says it’s a bitty sheepfold, no more’n that, just a lambing shed and pen. He was not happy wi’ us when he left.”