“Were we quiet enough?”
Gird leaped up and barely stopped the bellow that tried to fight its way from his throat. Ivis was grinning at him, along with the rest of the men who had gone around the bog. Rage clouded his vision for a moment as his heart raced. He felt he would explode. They were all watching, with the wary but smug look of villagers who have just outwitted a stranger. Another cluster of raindrops landed on his head, cold as ever, and it was suddenly funny. They had outwitted him, as fair as any trick he’d ever seen.
“You—” he began, growling over the laughter that was coming despite his rage. “Yes, damn you, you were quiet enough.” A chuckle broke loose, then another. “Now let’s see how quietly you can march home, eh?”
They were not as quiet, for the rainy spring evening began to close in fast, and they had to hurry. When they came to the clearing, Gird was glad he’d told Pidi to stay and mind the fire; they all needed to crowd near the glowing coals. Pidi had cooked beans, flavored slightly with the herbs he’d gathered.
Next morning was damp and foggy, but not actively raining. Gird woke stiff and aching, with a raw throat. Around him, the others were still sleeping, Pidi with the boneless grace of all small children. Gird pushed himself up, cursing silently, and crouched by the fire-pit. He held out a hand to the banked fire—still warmth within. But dry fuel? He peered around in the dimness. Someone—Pidi, he supposed—had made a crude shelter of stone, and laid sticks in it. They might be drier than the rest. He poked the fire cautiously with one of them, uncovering raw red coals. After a moment, the end of the stick flared. Dry enough. He yawned until his jaw cracked, then coughed as the raw air hit his sore throat. Sleeping wet in wet clothes—he hadn’t done that for years. He’d never enjoyed it.
Alone in the early morning gloom, he let himself sag into sour resentment. Forget the hot sib. What he needed was a good stout mug of ale. Two mugs. Maybe they could build barrels and brew? No, first they had to have a dry place to sleep. A drop of cold water hit his bald spot. No, first they had to have hats. He added more sticks to the fire. Some of them steamed, hissing but enough were dry to waken crackling flames. Someone across the clearing groaned, then coughed.
“Lady’s grace, I hurt all over,” he heard someone say. He felt better. If he wasn’t the only one, it didn’t mean he was too old for this. Another groan, more coughs. “I’d give anything for a mug of ale,” said another man. “Sib,” said someone else. “Anything but beans or soaked wheat,” said yet another. Gird felt much better. The soldiers had grumbled in the barracks, when he was a recruit. They’d grumbled when it rained and they had to work in it; they’d grumbled when it was hot and sweat rolled out from under their helmets. Grumbling was normal. He was normal. And he knew exactly what the sergeant had done about grumbling.
“Time to get up,” he said briskly.
A startled silence. A low mutter: “Gods above, he’s up. He’s got the fire going.” He heard more stirrings, and turned to see men sitting up, clambering to their feet, rolling over to come up on one elbow. He grinned at them.
“Can’t fight a war in bed,” he said. Utter disbelief in some faces, amused resignation in others. Pidi, who had not walked to the bog and back, came over to the fire, all bright eyes and eagerness.
“I found most of the roots and barks for sib.” He showed Gird a small pile which Gird would not have recognized. “There’s no kira in sight of camp, and you told me not to leave—”
“Good for you,” said Gird. “Do you know how much of each?” He certainly didn’t. Pidi nodded.
“But it takes a long time. Do you want me to start it?”
“Go ahead. We need it.”
While Pidi started the sib, Gird went off to the new jacks trench, along with several others. Already the camp smelled better, he thought. Certainly the men looked better, even grumpy and stiff as they were. That hike in the rain had accomplished something.
“We need to set up work groups,” Gird said without preamble, as they gathered near the fire. “A hand to each group—” They began shuffling themselves into clusters of five. Gird had thought of assigning them to groups, but decided to let them pick their partners—for now, at least. With his knife, he shaped chunks of bark peeling from a fallen limb into the familiar tallies of the farmer. “One notch for food, two for tools, three for camp chores. Two groups get a food tally, and one hand each for the others. We’ll drill after breakfast, then the groups go to their assignments—”
“What’s food for?” asked Triga. “We’re the ones get to eat?” No one laughed. Gird shook his head.
“Those with a food tally go looking for food: hunt, gather herbs, tend the things we plant, later. Ivis, how did food donated by farmers come to you? Did someone tell you it was there, or did you go ask?”
“Every so often someone would come to the wood, and leave a feathered stick in a certain tree—that’s for Whitetree, the nearest. Fireoak usually brought the food itself, put it just inside the wood. Diamod traveled about so much, he’d know, or he’d see it and bring it in, or come get us to carry it. And sometimes, when things were very bad, one of us’d sneak into the village and beg.”
“Which is dangerous for them and for us both. And I suppose too much hunting would bring the foresters, wouldn’t it?”
“Aye. They don’t mind rabbits and hares and such, but the duke likes his deer hunts.”
“Well, we’ll have to do something. Fori’s good with his sling, and he can set snares: that’s something you can all learn. We need a better way to let the villagers know when we need something, and what it is. With a few more tools, we might be able to gather more food and lean on them less.” Gird handed the first food tally to the group Ivis was with. “You know the local village; you’ve got kin there. Find out what they can send, and when. What is the most trouble to them. When they’ve had trouble, and what gave them away. If they can’t send food, find out if they can send sacks, boxes, a bucket—anything we can use to store or prepare the food we have. Even little things: a small sack is better than none.”
“The other food tally.” Gird handed it to the group Fori was with. “Go some distance away from this camp, and then look for anything edible you can find. Birds’ eggs, birds in the nest, rabbits, squirrels—most creatures are having young about now; look for their hiding places.”
“Frogs?” Triga was not in that group, but he spoke up anyway.
“When you’re carrying the food tally, you can catch us frogs, Triga,” Gird said.
“And you’ll eat them?”
Gird swallowed hard. “I’ll do my best. Now—you are with the tool tally. You all know we need a lot of things we don’t have. Another shovel, axes, chisels. A shepherd’s crook would be handy for pulling down vines with edible berries; a drover’s stick for beating nuts from the nut trees next fall. We need pots to cook in, bowls to eat from, baskets or sacks to carry what our gatherers find, spoons, buckets, rope: every one of these will help us make more of what we need. Whoever holds the tool tally will work for that day on one of the things we need.”
“I can make baskets,” Triga said. Everyone stared at him; usually women made baskets. He reddened. “I used to plait the grasses in the bog,” he said. “First just for something to do, and then to see what I could make.”
“Could you make a basket from anything around here?” asked Gird. He did not want to make another trek to the bog so soon.
Triga stared around, uncertain. “Maybe… I can try… but it may not work right the first time.”
“That’s all right. If you find a way, it’s time well spent. Any of the rest of you like to whittle?” One man raised his hand. “Good— why don’t you start whittling some spoons, and bowls if you find the right chunks of wood. You others try it—anything’s better than nothing.”
“What about the guard we send out to listen for foresters?” asked Ivis.
“From the last group, those with camp chores tally. Two go out, and three will have ple
nty to do here. Gathering wood for the fire, tending the fire, and some other things I’ve thought up. But first— we didn’t do any drill yesterday, so let’s line up.”
This time they lined up quickly and almost evenly. They all started on the same foot, and they marched almost in step from the firepit to the stream, still in lines. Wavery lines, but lines. Gird showed them how to turn in place to the right and left, and then had them march around the camp as a column of twos. They had to weave in and out of trees, and they were soon out of step, but the pairs did manage to stay side by side. By this time Gird was warm and had worked the stiffness out, so he sent the two groups with food tallies off, and picked two guards from the camp chores group. One of the remaining three he sent in search of the driest wood he could find, one sat by the fire, and Gird beckoned to the last.
He had had the idea that they could weave lengths of wattle, as he’d used for the barton gate, and the fence between his smallgarden and his neighbor’s. Wattle laid at an angle against a log might give some protection from wet. He explained what he had in mind to Artha, a very tall, loose-jointed man nearly bald on top. Artha had vague, hazy blue eyes, and the least initiative Gird had seen.
“But I don’t—that wattle, now, we allus made it wi’ the sticks i’ the ground, like. Put the sticks down in the wet mud, my granda he said, and then put the vines through, back and forth, back and forth—”
“But the sticks don’t have to be in the ground,” Gird said. The times he’d mended his gate, without ever taking it down, he knew that. Artha stood slack-handed, his jaw hanging. Gird realized that this was going to take firmness, as if Artha had been a child. “Artha, bring me some sticks, about so long—” He spread his arms to show the length.
“All right, but I dunno how you’ll do it lessen you put them sticks in the mud first—”
“Never mind, just bring me the sticks.” Artha ambled off, and Gird searched up and down the streambank until he found a willow sprouting multiply from the muck. He cut the pliant sprouts and stacked them.
By midday, Gird looked around the busy campsite and smiled to himself. The voices he heard all sounded content; one man was even whistling “Nutting in the Woods.” His sergeant and his father had both been right: idleness was a fool’s delight, and work brought its own happiness. Triga had created one lopsided basket from the same willow sprouts Gird was using, and then torn it down to make it “right” as he said. Now he was halfway through again. It didn’t look quite like any basket Gird had seen, but it was going to be a useful size, he could tell. The man who liked to whittle—Kerin, that was—had turned out three recognizable spoons. He’d pointed out that he needed something to rub them with, to finish them, and one of the others had experimented with Gird’s collection of cobbles. Gird and Artha had made one length of wattle, not quite an armspan wide by twice that in length. Gird held it up to the light: it would no more keep water out than a basket, he thought. But it would support something else. Leaves? A deerhide?
Late afternoon brought the food gatherers back. First came the hunting and gathering group, with a miscellany of edibles. Birds’ eggs from different kinds of nests: small, round and beige, pointy and blue with speckles, streaked with brown on beige. They’d found a rabbit’s burrow, and while the blind, squirming kits had been very small, there were eight of them. Fori had knocked another squirrel out of a tree, and they’d found a squirrel nest—but that led to near disaster, when Fori, precariously wrapped around the slender bole, had met a furious mother squirrel face to face. Fori had come down faster than he went up, losing skin off his arms. “But I have a nose, still,” he said. They had also, on the advice of one of the others, dug up the roots of the thick-leaved grasslike plants that grew along the stream lower down. One man had the bight of his shirt full of last fall’s nuts: some were rotting or sprouting, but some were still whole and sweet.
Ivis’s group had come back with little food, but other important treasures. “Gars says he never used his granda’s old stone tools— even his granda didn’t—but look—” and he emptied a well-worn, greasy leather sack. Gird looked at the odd-shaped bits of stone curiously. He could remember seeing clutter like that in someone’s cottage… and old Hokka had used a sickle set with tiny stone blades. But he’d never used stone tools himself. “They’re sharp,” Ivis said, as if he’d asked. “Gars thinks some of them had handles— wooden handles—but I don’t know how they’d fasten. But you can cut with them.” Some were obviously blades, thin shards of stone like broken pottery. Others were rough lumps with a sharp edge, like handax heads, or chisels. Kerin poked at them.
“I could use these… it would be easier to make a bowl with this than a knife…” Gird nodded; that got him off the hook.
“Fine—try them, and if you can teach someone else—” He turned to thank Ivis, but Ivis was still grinning.
“That’s not all. Look here—” Wrapped in a wet cloth, he had brought seedlings of the common greenleaves: cabbage, lettuce…
The villagers had liked the idea of the outlaws growing some of their own food, and he’d been given as much as he could carry without crushing it. One of the men carried a small round cheese, and another had a large lump of tallow. He had also thought to ask for things Gird hadn’t mentioned: beeswax, soap, thread. “Best of all—” Ivis nodded at the last member of his team, who pulled a bundle from under his shirt. It was cloth, something rolled into a lump—but the deepest, most intense blue Gird had ever seen.
“What is that?” he asked.
Ivis grinned. “You know the lords won’t let us have blue clothes—”
“Yes. I never saw any.”
“This is old, from my granda’s time. He used to say that the blue was expensive—it came from some kind of blue stone, from far away north—but before the lords came it was a favorite color. Good luck color. Anyway, my brother says if you’re serious about overturning the lords, best we’d have some blue shirts.”
Gird unfolded the bundle carefully. Two blue shirts, each decorated with intricate embroidery around the neck, flowers and grain in brilliant colors. The old woolen cloth was as sound as ever. “Where had they kept this? Not even a moth hole…”
“I don’t know. My brother’s the eldest; he knew about it and I didn’t. But I do remember my granda’s stories. What do you think?”
“I think it’s good luck,” said Gird, refolding the shirts carefully.
Chapter Twelve
On a bright, blustery day in early summer, Gird led his troop eastward through the wood. There were twenty-four of them now, and every one of them carried his own spoon and bowl as well as his own belt knife. Each had a hat, plaited of grass and oiled against rain, and a staff about his own height. Each had three flat hard loaves of bread tucked into his shirt. And they marched quietly through the wood, with Diamod scouting ahead, and Triga bringing up the rear.
They were on their way to meet another of the Stone Circle
groups two days away; Diamod (as usual) made contact. Behind them, the forester’s campsite was clean and bare; they had moved all their gear some days back to another site Gird had found. Gird found himself about to whistle, and didn’t. They were all doing well, including the new ones. He’d been surprised when three more came from his old village; a friend of Fori’s, Teris’s son Orta, and Siga, a single man about ten years Gird’s junior.
They had told him all the latest news: how the steward had come to Gird’s cottage only to find it stripped to the bare walls. He had taken that for Gird’s impudence, but the villagers had done it, hiding every pot, tool, and bit of cloth. Gird had felt tears burning his eyes when the boys showed what they brought—his people, his neighbors, had cared that much, to risk themselves to save his things, and then to send their sons with it. Irreplaceable treasure indeed: two hammers, three chisels, his awl and his axe, a shovel blade, a spokeshave, a plane, a kettle, a longhandled metal spoon, firetongs, the cowhides that had been stretched across the bed-frames, a furl of cloth
that still showed rusty bloodstains… “We couldn’t carry it all,” Orta had explained. “But if you go back, or send someone, there’s more.”
His eyes still burned, thinking of it. He blinked the tears away, and told himself to keep his mind on the journey.
Part of that involved watching out for forage along the way. They had all learned, since he came, to make use of whatever food came along. Gird had even eaten one of Triga’s frogs; he was sure it wriggled in his throat, but he had to admit it tasted like food. More or less. Some of the others refused, but most followed his lead. He still didn’t like frogs for dinner, but better that than hunger. Now he scanned the undergrowth on either side for edible berries and fruits, herbs and mushrooms. Fori, still the best slinger in the troop, would be watching the trees for squirrels or levets.
Gird wished it had been possible to leave Pidi with someone. The boy was too young for this, he told himself again—but then again, the boy was not as young as he might be. The black eye had faded, leaving only a faint dark stain beneath, but the little child he had been, thoughtless and carefree, had not come back. Pidi seemed happy enough—he laughed sometimes, and scampered through the woods like a young goat—but he would never be carefree. It would have happened in time, Gird knew, but—he shook that thought away. There was no safe place for Pidi. Home had not been safe. That led him to Rahi, and the black sorrow pierced him again. She had lost the child, in fever, and when he’d last heard, a few days ago, she was still too weak to get up.
A gust of wind roared by overhead, whipping the forest canopy and letting a flash of sunlight through. The Windsteed in spring seeks the far-ranging Mare … he thought, clicking his tongue in the rhythm of the chant. This was late for the Windsteed’s forays, but what else could it be? He accepted the omen, and let the wind blow away his dark thoughts. It never paid to argue with the gods, any of them.
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