Gird threw his long stick, end over end. It spun in the air like a wheel; the man saw it coming, dropped his horn, and screamed. He ducked; the stick hit the stone above him and shattered. Gird had no time to watch this. One of the others had jumped at him as he threw. Gird threw himself to one side, and pulled his hauk from his belt. The sword knocked a chip from it, and the guard grinned triumphantly just as someone else’s pike took him in the back. Gird grabbed the sword out of his hand, and looked around. Four guards lay dead or dying; the small courtyard was full of Gird’s men, and the guard on the tower stairs was slumped against the wall.
“Sling,” said one of Gird’s men smugly. Fori was not the only one, now, who could hit something with a slung stone.
“We’re not through,” Gird reminded them. “Get this place secure, and get four—no, six—hands to the bridge.” He went for the tower, and panted his way up the steps. The guard there was unconscious; Gird dumped him off the steps for someone else to kill, and continued to the top of the squatty tower.
From there he could see dust rising from the distant horsemen who were chasing his fast patrol. A score of them, at least, by the dust. Below, he heard the noise settle into the busy murmur of purposeful activity. He looked the other way. There were six hands—most of his remaining pikes—almost to the bridge. Almost a third of them were wearing blue shirts. Gird grinned. His yeomen had begun wearing them when they expected a good fight. Gird himself still had the one Ivis had brought to their first camp, but he was saving that for the day they really needed luck.
Today they needed only the time the fugitives were buying. Gird had all his yeomen in place well before sundown, when the pursuers might be expected to return. A carefully selected group of followers straggled across the fields, although they did not straggle nearly so well when they tried. They kept closing up into neat lines, until Gird yelled at them again. The returning horsemen, trotting briskly in formation toward their own guardhouse, could not help but notice the milling mass of people in the field; they turned aside to investigate. As soon as their backs were to the road and the guardhouse, Gird’s signal sprung the trap, and up from roadside ditch and out from the enclosure came the yeomen with their long sticks and their new-won expertise in unhorsing cavalry. One, indeed, wheeled instantly and rode for the bridge to alarm the city beyond, but found himself cut off by the pikemen.
Gird hurried his people into position for the reaction that was sure to come. He wanted both ends of the bridge secure, breastworks on the rocky west bank of the river, a defined perimeter that included the guardpost and the bridge. Late that night, he was sitting over a table in the guardpost with Selamis, interpreting the records that they’d found.
“This is tolls,” Selamis said. “Last year by this time they’d had—let me see—almost twice as much road traffic. Numbers and weight are both down. So his income will be down—”
“But he’s rich; he’ll have treasure in a storehouse—”
“He has to pay his troops, feed his troops, pay his suppliers. Where do you think his money comes from?”
“Fieldfees,” said Gird, almost bitterly. Selamis shook his head. “Field-fee’s the least of it. Road tax, bridge toll, market tax, building tax, death fees, marriage fees—not just on farmers, on everyone. Smiths won’t make his weapons for nothing. He has to find them the raw metal, pay someone to bring it here.” Selamis’s hands were still tender, but he could turn the pages himself now. “Look at this. Cloth merchants’ stonage last year—”
“Stonage?”
“Stones’ weight—didn’t your village use that?”
“But cloth is furls.”
“Not in bulk. The rough measure of stonage is what team it takes to start the wagon on the level. If you’ve ever been in a big market town, in the square, you’ll have seen the tracks, where they test it. The town’s market judge has a hitch—can’t use the traders’ horses, they could be trained wrong. Double-double-hand-stone, a thousand stones, that is, if a pair starts it. If it takes another pair, it’s counted as two, and so on. It’s only rough; I was told once that a thousand-stone load will break down to more than that, unloaded, but it takes too long to do that. Most lords just raise the load-fee.” Selamis liked to talk, and explained things clearly. Gird was fascinated at the variety of knowledge a lord’s bastard had collected. When he asked, Selamis shrugged and seemed to answer frankly. “I was in his household until I was shoulder high to a grown man—they taught me reading, writing, figures, something of law and more of custom. Their custom.”
“And then fostered you to farmers? Why?”
“I don’t know.” That was a door slammed in his face. “I suppose my father decided he had enough bastards around.”
Gird thought of asking which lord had been his father, but thought better of it. The man was upset enough already. He yawned, honestly if tactfully, and suggested a few hours sleep before the inevitable attack from Grahlin. As it happened, the attack did not come at dawn, when Gird had expected it, and he got almost a full night’s sleep before someone woke him up to ask his advice in an argument between two families whose children had started a fight.
Once he’d dealt with that (giving each child involved an unpleasant camp chore which took him far away from the others: the mothers might have thought of this, and let him sleep), he went out to look at the bridge by morning light.
Chapter Twenty-three
Full daylight, and nothing moved on the road between the city and the bridge. Gird stalked along the lines, glowering into the distance. He could not attack the city; he knew nothing about attacking cities. They had to come out here, where he could fight them. So far the sier had been willing to do that, and Gird had assumed he would come to get his guardpost and his bridge back.
“I don’t like this,” said Felis, when the sun was a hand higher. Gird didn’t like it either. He wondered what the sier was doing instead of sending his troops out. That brown man would not give up his power easily. Even as he thought this, a shout from the bridge brought his head around. He could see nothing but one of his own yeomen waving an arm; he waved his in reply and jogged on.
Under the bridge in the early morning, the Hoor had flowed steadily northward, toward the Honnorgat. Now, even as Gird watched, that flow diminished, the water’s color changing from clear green to murky brown. Then it was gone, and the wet rocks and mud gleamed in the sun before they dried. Fish flopped frantically in the puddles, splashing the water out. Sinuous gleams flashed up the bank and into weeds: watersnakes.
“Esea’s curse,” someone said softly. Gird felt trapped with everyone looking to him for answers he did not have. He had never seen a river disappear like that, and neither had anyone else he’d known.
“Fish,” said someone else, and he saw several of his yeomen slithering down the bank to grab for fish in the puddles.
“Get back!” he yelled. Whatever it was had power to spare; where a river disappeared it could return. His people stared at him, and turned to climb back out. He wondered how much water they’d drawn, how many buckets and skins and jugs they had for their need. Expecting the worst, he sent someone to check on the kitchen well at the guardhouse; it was empty, which did not surprise him.
What surprised him was that nothing happened. Around midday, a runner came in from the eastern contingent reporting that they had fought two stiff engagements, come off intact, but had to retreat up the River Road eastward. That meant they could not help if he needed them, but he had expected that. The fish trapped in their puddles died, and stank by mid afternoon. The nearest creeks to the west were barely trickling; beyond them, the flow seemed normal. Gird sent a small party north to the Honnorgat; they reported that the big river seemed completely normal. Although it was not particularly hot for the time of year, everyone felt thirsty—which was partly the knowledge that they had no source of water, Gird knew.