Surrender None

by Elizabeth Moon

  He looked around the room again, seeing destruction everywhere, and out the front door, now splintered—something stirred, there. He could not leave Raheli, but he must; he had to get water, rags, something. He stood too quickly and his head spun. Staggering, he made it to the door and then crouched, heaving all he had eaten into the trampled torn dirt of the yard.

  Then he looked up and saw the rest of it.

  She must have been at the well, for the blood trail started there, and the water jug lay broken beside it. Girnis lay sprawled between the well and door, her slight body twisted as if she’d been thrown against the wall. And Pidi, where was Pidi? Gird found him on the far side of the well, fists jammed into his mouth, trying not to cry; a hard blue knot on the side of his head and a welt on his back.

  He was shaking with rage and grief; he could hardly lower the bucket to the water. The weight of it full dragged on him, steadied him; he got it up, and scooped a handful for Pidi, who said nothing but drank it.

  “Stay here,” he said to the boy; Pidi nodded. Gird went to Girnis; she was alive, but unconscious. Her left arm was crooked, and swelling: broken. He glanced around for something to splint it with, and caught sight of someone, a kerchiefed head, over the sidewall.

  It disappeared; he did not call. He found a piece of the splintered door, and tore a strip from his tunic. Girnis did not stir when he handled her broken arm. Should he carry her inside? No. Girnis would do well enough out here until she woke, he thought, and knew that he wasn’t thinking as well as he should. But Raheli needed him. He took the bucket inside, breathing hard through his mouth. The cottage stank of blood and brains and slaughter. He had killed animals more cleanly—but he could not stop to think of that.

  Raheli’s face, if she lived, would have a scar from hairline to jaw. He was not sure she would live. The blade that had cut her had gone through into her mouth, come near her eye—might have broken her jaw or her cheekbone as well, he couldn’t tell. Raheli had had the parrion of herbal wisdom from Mali; it was not his knowledge. Blood pooled under her head; her scant breaths gurgled. Blood in her mouth, what if she choked? He looked wildly around, and this time found the scattered bedding, the cooking cloths for straining, the cloths for women in their time. As quickly as he could, trying not to think beyond the immediate wound, he pressed the cleanest rags into her wounds. The long shallow gash along her ribs had nearly quit bleeding anyway; the deeper wound where the blade had met her hip oozed steadily, reddening the cloth. Her face—her face was hopeless, he thought at first, as blood soaked one cloth after another.

  “Gird?” He jumped, swore, and turned to glare at the light that poured in the broken door. Then he saw it was a woman, though he could not make out her face against the light. “Is—is Raheli alive?”

  “Just.” His voice grated and broke; he wanted to burst into tears. Hard enough to be alone with this, but harder with someone else.

  “Let me see.” She came up to him, and now he could see it was Tam’s aunt, old Virdi. Her breath hissed out. “Aahhh—Lady’s Peace, she’s bad—”

  “I know that.” He had never liked Virdi, but she had the healing in her hands, so his mother had said. And no scorn to her for not saving Mali—healing in the hands was nothing in a plague of fever.

  “The lord, he did this?” He thought he heard derision in her voice, and bristled. Next she would ask why he’d let it happen. But when he glared at her, her eyes were soft, not accusing at all.

  “He did. I was—plowing. They—” He could not go on.

  She nodded. “I saw across the fields—the guards knocked you down, there were too many. Lady’s Curse on Mikrai Pidal Kevre Kelaive: may he never know peace.”

  He had never heard a woman lay a curse before, but there was no doubt Virdi had done just that. So simple? He shivered, suddenly cold. Her hand touched his head, dry and chill as a snake.

  “Near broke your head, they did, too—” He had not realized that he’d been hit, but where she touched him was a heavy pain— and then it was gone, and she was rubbing her hands briskly on the hearthstone. She gave him a quick smile. “Rock to rock; the hearthstone’s strong enough.” She pointed, and he saw a little crack he didn’t remember seeing.

  Her hands on Raheli’s head hardly seemed to have weight; they hovered, touched as light as a moth on a nightflower, retreated. She sighed, then lifted the cloths he’d laid on that torn face, and hissed again. “Get more water—and—” a quick look at the hearth, now fireless, “—go to Tam’s, and bring a live coal.”

  “But will she die while I’m—?” Gird didn’t finish the question, for she interrupted.

  “Not if you’re quick about it.” She had poured the remaining water in the bucket into the one unbroken pot, and he took the bucket and went out. Pidi still crouched by the well, but now he was crying, shoulders heaving. Gird drew another bucket of water, and found the dipper somehow unbroken, caught in the hedge. He squatted beside Pidi.

  “Come on, lad—let me see—” Pidi looked up, eyes streaming. “I—I couldn’t—” He winced as Gird touched the lump on his head. “You couldn’t stop them. Neither could I.”

  “But—but they—they hurt Raheli—and Parin tried to fight—”

  “Pidi, listen. I have to get fire. Can you stay here?”

  “Raheli? And—and Girnis! They—hurt her too!” The boy grabbed Gird’s arm with both hands, threatening to overturn the bucket. Gird set the bucket carefully aside and gathered up his youngest child, letting him sob. He wanted to do that himself, would have given anything for a strong shoulder to cry on, but all the ones he’d known were gone. He patted the boy’s back, carefully avoiding the welt on it, and carefully not thinking. Enough to comfort one who could be comforted. “I’m so sorry,” the boy was saying between sobs. “I’m so sorry—”

  “It’s not your fault.” Gird tried to keep his voice steady, soothing, as if Pidi were a sheep caught in a briar, a cow with her head through a gap. Finally sobs quieted to gulps. Gird unhooked the boy’s hands and moved him away far enough to see his face. “Here—let me wipe that for you—” Pidi nodded, mouth set tight, and Gird cleaned his face. “Now—I still have to go get a firestart, from Tam’s house. Will you stay here quietly?” Pidi nodded, solemnly, tears threatening again. “I’ll be back,” said Gird. Pidi said nothing.

  He saw no one on the way to Tam’s cottage, though he was aware of a stir in the village, of people watching him and ducking from his sight. All the doors were shut. He knocked on Tam’s door, and Tam’s wife, white-faced, opened at once. She paled even more when she saw the blood on his clothes.

  “Virdi sent me for a firecoal,” he said, as calmly as he could. Tam’s children were huddled around the hearth, silent and staring. “Our fire’s out.” Tam’s wife nodded. Without saying a word, she went to her hearth, and took a burning brand, far bigger than the custom was. She offered it with a stiff little bow, and he took it gingerly.

  In the sunlight, the flame was pale, hardly visible; he could feel the heat of it as it blew back toward his face. He knew by that he was walking fast, too fast. Pidi waited in the yard, sitting now by Girnis. He nodded to the boy, and stopped to pick up some splinters of the door.

  Inside, Virdi had Raheli’s face clean of blood, but for the wound itself. She had her hand over Raheli’s cheek, her expression withdrawn. Gird stepped carefully around her and laid the only fire pattern he knew, the shape the men used in the open. The brand from Tam’s house lit it instantly, and warmth returned to his hearth. He went back out for the bucket, and picked up more wood. For an instant, he wondered if it was bad luck to burn doorwood, but then shrugged. How much worse could his luck be? He put the bucket down beside Raheli, and laid the wood carefully on the fire.

  “Is there a boiler left?” asked Virdi suddenly. Gird looked around the chaos in the room, and then went to check in the back room. There he found a single metal pot, the one Mali had used for steeping her herbs, dented but still whole. He took it to Vir
di, who nodded. “Good. Start heating water in it—put it near the fire, but not in it. And then clean your hands. I’ll need your help.”

  They had Raheli’s wounds bound, and her body covered with the cleanest cloth, when the steward came. All that time anger had grown in Gird’s heart, anger he had controlled so long that he had half-forgotten some of it. Now it grew as swiftly as a summer storm-cloud, filling him with black rage. He had tried so hard: he had suffered so much already. In spite of all he had brought up three of his own children, and two of Arin’s—he would have had his first grandchild the next year—and the lords could not let even one hardworking farmer alone, in peace.

  Yet when the steward came—an old man, now, slightly bent but still capable of rule—Gird said nothing of it. He heard what he expected to hear: he, as head of his household, would bear the penalty for his son-in-law’s attack on the count’s son and his friends, and for his own attempt to get to his cottage to defend them. The loss of the cottage he expected, immediate eviction, fines, loss of all “so-called personal” property, damages assessed for the breakage of the lords’ property in the cottage.

  “The count remembers you,” the steward said slowly, his eyes drifting from the broken loom to the smashed door. “He will be content, he says, if you sign yourself and all your children into serfdom, become his property in name as in fact.” He paused, and his voice lowered so that Gird could hardly hear it. “Were I you, Gird, I would flee: he’ll name you outlaw, but you would escape for a time. Otherwise—you well understand what kind of man he is; he would take delight in all you fear, in far worse than you have seen, in this manor. I have done all I can.”

  “You serve him.” That was all Gird dared say, and he clamped his mouth on the rest of it.

  “I serve him—I gave my oath, long ago, to the count’s father; had he not died young—but that’s no matter. I break my oath by this much—to warn you, to say that for this night I can promise you no pursuit. Say you will clean and mend what you can by midday tomorrow, when you must be evicted: I will tell him that.”

  It was all the kindness left; years later Gird realized what the steward risked, and what he would suffer if anyone found out what he had done.

  Chapter Nine

  All the times he had thought about leaving, it had never been like this. He had imagined sending the children away somewhere (but where?), going himself to join the little band of rebels he had first met—but not this terrifying journey. He was sure they were leaving a trail a child could follow through the narrow wood. Anyone would expect him to go that way—but what other way was there? He could not have strolled past the manor itself with Raheli on his back.

  It still worried him that he’d left the cottage such a wreck. It wasn’t his fault, he knew that, but a lifetime’s work and care nagged at him. He should have—

  Ahead, two rocks clacked sharply together. Gird halted, breathing hard. Behind him, he could hear Fori’s breathing as well, on the other end of the litter. Raheli was heavier than he’d guessed. Pidi, beside him, glanced up and Gird nodded. Pidi clicked two pebbles in his hand, mimicking the stones’ sound. Another clack, this a triple. Pidi replied with the triple of triples Gird had taught him. Trouble, that was. Danger, trouble, need help—any of those.

  Raheli moved on the litter, and moaned softly. Gird looked over his shoulder. Blood had seeped through the pack of moss on her face, staining it dark. He heard a twig crack, and looked ahead. There were three, coming down the slope. One was Diamod. He could have wished it was someone else.

  “Gird—what is it?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Only the rock signals of trouble, that someone was needed. Yours?” Diamod looked past him at the children.

  “Aye. My daughter’s hurt bad; they killed her husband. Outlawed me, for what he did, and for trying to get to her—”

  “I’m sorry.” Diamod actually sounded sorry; Gird had been half-certain that he would dare amusement or scorn. “So—you’re fugitives now?”

  “Yes. I don’t know if Rahi will live—”

  “Later. Now we must get you away.” Diamod waved the other two men forward, and they took the handles from Gird and Fori.

  “These are smooth!” said one, clearly surprised.

  Gird hawked and spat. “Scythe and shovel handles,” he said. “I’m outlawed anyway; might’s well bring something useful.”

  Diamod grinned at him, then sobered as he looked at the others. “Are all these coming?”

  “Fori’s my brother’s son. His wife died last year, in childbirth. The other two are mine, and have no place in that village.”

  They set off again, faster for the unwearied strength of the two men carrying Raheli. Gird strained his ears backwards, expecting to hear any moment the cry of hounds, horses’ hooves crashing in the leaves behind them. But he heard nothing, only their own hard breathing, their own footsteps.

  They followed the water up out of the wood, past the cleft Arin had shown Gird all those years ago, where the Stone Circle

  visitors had waited for so many nights. Up a narrow, rocky defile, and carefully around the west slope of the hill, keeping as much as possible to the low scrub. Gird looked up once or twice, seeing folds of land ahead he did not know, but looked back oftener. When would the pursuit come, and how bad would it be?

  By noon, when the sun baked pungent scent from the scrub, they had found another watercourse, this one winding away to the south. Along its banks low trees formed dense cover. Diamod lagged far behind, watching for pursuit, as the others paused for a brief rest. Gird dipped water from the creek, and bathed Raheli’s face.

  She was awake again, lips pressed tightly together, eyes dull. He did not want to speak to her—what could he say?—but she questioned him. “Where—are we?”

  “South of the village, beyond the hill. We had to leave, Rahi.”

  “Parin—they killed him—”

  “Yes.”

  Her hand strayed to her belly, as if feeling for the child within. “I—don’t want to lose the baby—”

  “Virdis said you would not, unless you got fevered. She gave me herbs for you.” He dug into the roll of clothing and bandages for the little packet of herbs. Rahi shook her head.

  “I’m fevered now—I can tell. If I lose it—” Her voice trailed away, and her eyes fixed on some distance Gird could not fathom. Then she looked at him directly. “The little ones?”

  “Pidi has a lump on his head, but he’s all right. It would take more than a lump to damage him. Giri has a broken arm. Here— you need to drink—” Gird lifted her as gently as he could, but Rahi flinched and moaned. He could feel her fever burning through the wrappings Virdis had put around her. She sipped a little water, then shook her head. He laid her back down. She alone, of all his children, reminded him of Mali—she had that same hair, the same quick wit. He could not lose her. But her fever mocked him. Of course he could lose her, as he had lost his parents, his brother, his brother’s wife, the babies that had died. He could lose her quickly or slowly, as the fever raged or died, or as pursuit caught them.

  He looked around at the others. Giri, her arm bound tightly to her side, looked pale and sick; she had never been as strong as Rahi. Pidi, whose lump had matured into a spectacular black eye, sat watching Gird alertly. Fori, much like Arin but with Issa’s slender build, sat hunched with his head down, breathing heavily.

  “Fori?” Gird put a hand on his shoulder, and Fori jumped. When he looked up, his face was streaked with tears.

  “I should have stopped them,” Fori said, through sobs. “I—I should have been there.”

  “I, too—but we weren’t. And if we had been, we’d have been dead as Parin is now.”

  “But she’s—”

  “Your cousin, and my daughter.”

  Diamod came back before he could say more, breathing hard as if he’d been running a long way. “I saw guards on the near side of that first hill, moving slowly. Not the way we’d come
, exactly— I don’t think they have a trail. But we can’t stay here. We must move under cover, and keep moving.”

  This time Gird and Fori took the litter again, and the other two men took their bundles. One of them led the way southward, summering as Gird thought of it, keeping them along the creek bank as the water deepened and broadened, then leading them eastward, sunrising, up a tributary. Diamod lagged behind, overtaking them again near dark, when they’d stopped under a clump of pickoak where a spring came bubbling up from the rocks.

  “They didn’t follow,” he said, before anyone asked. “They’ve put someone up on the hill—I saw a glitter up there—but no sign of real pursuit. We must stay out of sight of that hilltop, and no fire, but we can think now where to take the—your daughter.”

  Gird hoped his face did not show all he felt. “She’s fevered now,” he said, ducking his head. Raheli had said nothing, all the afternoon, but she seemed to be in a sick daze. He had gotten her to drink a little twice, but nothing more.

  “She needs shelter, and a healer. Have you any family in another village?”

  Gird shook his head. “Only my wife’s—my dead wife’s—family, over in Fireoak. But I don’t know where that is from here, and even so they might not take her.”

  One of the other men turned to him. “Fireoak? My sister married into that village. They don’t have much trade, those folk, but they’re kindly.”