“Fine, then, when you’re sober—but what if you’re pickled in ale when you write the laws?”
“I won’t be.” He waited a moment, to see how they’d take that, and was surprised at the change in the atmosphere. Most of them were listening, were believing him. The others were uncertain now, no longer detached or hostile.
“I may be pigheaded, but I’m not that stupid: I made a mistake, a big one, and it’s cost all of us, not just me. I’m not going to do it again.”
“Going to let someone tell you to quit?” asked the same woman’s voice. Gird had not thought farther than keeping away from ale altogether.
“Good idea,” he said, surprising her. “Who would you trust?” A long pause was followed by several muttered suggestions, mostly marshals. The woman spoke up again.
“Rahi?”
“Tell you what,” Gird said. “I’ll talk to Rahi, Cob, those others you mentioned—and as far as the ale goes, they can tell me what they think. Is that fair?”
This time almost all of them agreed. “But what about Binis?” asked another woman. Gird nodded, and waved quiet those who tried to hush her.
“She’s right. What I do from now on is one thing, but what I did to Binis and those others is another—something I have to deal with. What I thought is I’d go after her, find her. Apologize—”
“No! She’ll turn you in.”
Gird shrugged. “If she does, it’s better than her setting the sier on all of you.”
But this provoked more discussion and argument. Gird waited it out. Finally, Red Selis seemed to speak for most when he said, “It’s already happened; if she’s gone to the sier, then she’s gone—we don’t want to lose you as well. If she comes back, you can apologize then.”
“She won’t be back,” said someone else. “But the redhead has the right of it. You’re no good to us dead or captured.”
“I should tell her—” Gird began, when a voice behind him spoke out.
“Tell her what?” It was Rahi; he turned to see her standing there as if she’d never been anywhere else.
“I’ll tell you I’m sorry,” he said. “About last night—I didn’t know how drunk I was.”
“Very,” she said. Her mouth quirked. “More than I ever remember. I hope you learned something from it.”
“I did. And I was going to find Binis, and tell her—”
Rahi shook her head before he finished. “Best not. I’ve got her settled for now, best I could do.”
“What?”
“Where did you think I’d gone off to? Someone had to be sure she didn’t put the sier’s men on us right away. I let her have her say—and she’s got a tongue on her almost as bad as yours, when she’s roused—and finally convinced her she wouldn’t get any profit out of the steward, besides it not being everyone’s fault. But she hates you still, and she’d be glad to do you an injury if she could. You can’t mend it; best end it.”
The meeting broke up into clumps of people talking, a few arguing, some coming to Gird to thank him for speaking, some edging around him. He spoke to all who approached him, feeling Rahi’s attention at his back like a warm fire. Finally everyone wandered off into the gloom, and she came up beside him.
“You were stupid,” she said quietly. He heard the steel underneath.
“I was. I don’t know—”
“Mother said when you were young you drank like that sometimes. Came home ready to fight anyone.”
“I don’t remember—before I met her, yes, but after—”
“Only a few times, she said, but when she was dying she bade me watch for it. Help you if I could.”
“You helped me here. I’m sorry, Rahi.” He would have hugged her, but she stood just too far away, his daughter no longer, making sure he knew it. That, too, pierced his heart with a pain as great as all the rest.
She heaved a sigh much like his, and her hands turned, gesturing futility. “I don’t think you can understand what your ways have meant to women—beyond what you saw in it.” He raised his brows, inviting her to speak, but she shook her head. “You can’t understand; you’ve never been where we were. But don’t take it back, whatever you do. Not for me or for any of us. You’ll lose—lose more than soldiers from your army, if you do.”
“I don’t mean to, Rahi. You keep me straight, eh?”
She grinned, a little uneasily. “I’ll tell you you’re drinking too much, and you’ll curse at me.”
“To no effect; the gods know what curses to take seriously. I tell you now, when I’m sober—do it, and I’ll listen, or you can lay a hauk across my skull and let sense in. Did you hear me tell the others? Well then—it goes for you, too.”
Chapter Twenty-five
In the next few days, there was no sign that Binis had carried out her threat to expose the army to her sier. Gradually, by ones and twos, those who had fled returned. Gird, having apologized publicly, would have liked to forget it had ever happened, but knew that it had. In fact, the longer he thought about it, the worse it seemed: first a defeat, and then a drunken temper tantrum. He would have to do something to redeem himself.
His first choice of action was the disruption of a taxday at a market town west of them. Most towns had a garrison of troops, either belonging to the local lord or to the king. This made enforcement of special fees and taxes much easier. As well, the townsfolk felt even more at risk than poor farmers, and were less willing to lend their skills to Gird’s supporters. Although most farming villages now supported a barton, few towns did, and those bartons were small and timid.
This time, Gird made sure, through his spies, that none of the lords were actually in Brightwater before he planned his attack. He would face fewer than a hundred soldiers—well trained and equipped, but unsupported by magicks—and he had the support of bartons in all the surrounding farm villages, as well as shaky support from a faction of artisans in Brightwater itself.
Brightwater lay in a valley between two ridges, just where a stream had cut the western ridge to join the one that ran northward toward the Honnorgat. Most of Gird’s army had been east of it; he moved two cohorts onto the ridge west of the town, and waited. The town was too small to infiltrate beforehand; even with the summer fair approaching, the local troops were being cautious. He could not count on help from the two hands of yeomen in the barton there, either; they had formed only that winter, and had no regular place to drill. But as he’d expected, the approaching fair, and the incoming traders, distracted the local soldiers; they kept close to the town, scrutinizing traders, and did not bother to scout the woods. Once the fair began, the soldiers gave up even a pretense of patrol. They had enough to do in the town and the meadows around it. Traders who had not made it through to Grahlin on the River Road had turned aside and come here; the fields south of the town were thick with their camps.
On the day before the tax would be collected, a second contingent of soldiers arrived from Finyatha, wearing the king’s colors and carrying pikes. Selamis, watching this with Gird, announced that the enemy now had 150 soldiers in the town. Gird scowled, and sent scouts to check back along all the roads to make sure there were no more surprises. Then he called Rahi over.
“We’ll want every yeoman who can carry a weapon, and they need to be there—” He pointed across the valley to a wood below an outcrop of streaked yellow rock. “When we come down here, the fight’ll slide that way, and they’ll be placed right to land on ’em—”