It was over in minutes. Ten horsemen lay dead or dying on the ground; seven horses were dead, two crippled, and one, spooked, galloped away to the west. Gird looked around, amazed. The woman who had lost an arm sat propped against a dead horse, holding the stump and trying not to cry. Eight were dead; two others badly hurt. But—but peasants on foot, with no weapons but the tools of their work, had defeated armed men on horseback. Not an equal fight, but a real one.
He knew he should say something to them, but he couldn’t think of anything fitting. He looked around the horizon, and saw only the sentinel shepherd, waving that no danger neared. Per came up to him, bleeding from a gash on his scalp, bruised, amazed to be alive. They all were. Per nodded at the woman who’d lost an arm, and said “Gird—I see now.”
“Do you?” He felt a thousand years older as his fury drained away. It had to be better to die this way, fighting in the open, than rotting in dungeons or worked to hunger and sickness, but those silent bodies had been people a few minutes before. That woman had had two hands. He nodded at Per, and walked over to crouch beside her. Someone else had already torn a strip of cloth from her skirt to tie around the stump. “You—?”
She had gone pale, now, the gray-green pallor before fainting or death, but she managed a shaky smile, and moved her other hand, still gripping the sickle. “I—killed the horse.”
“You did.”
“I—fought—they—died—”
“Yes.”
“All?”
“All.”
“Good.” With that she crumpled, and before they had finished sorting out the dead and wounded, she had died.
“Noooo!” That scream came from one of the other women, who fell sobbing on the dead one’s body. Then she whirled to face Gird, her face distorted. “You let her die! You—you killed her—and this is what happens—” She waved her arms to encompass the whole bloody scene. “You said fight to live, but she’s dead, and Jori and Tam and Pilan—” Her voice broke into wild sobbing. Gird could think of nothing to say: she was right, after all. The woman had died, and seven others, and the two worst wounded would probably die, even if their lord didn’t notice their wounds and kill them for that. The ten horsemen had probably had lovers or wives, maybe children—the weight of that guilt lay on his shoulders. But another voice, thick with pain, spoke out.
“Nay, Mirag! Rahi’s dead, but she died happy, knowing she’d fought well. Not in a cage in the castle, like young Siela, when she tried to refuse that visiting duke, and not hanging from a hook on the wall, screaming for hours, like Varin. Gird promised us a chance, not safety.”
“You say that, with that hole in you, with your heart’s blood hot on your side? What will Eris say, tonight, when she has no one beside her: what will your children say?”
The man coughed, and wiped blood from his mouth. “Eris knows I’m here, and she knows why. If she weren’t heavy for bearing, she’d be here herself, and the little ones too. This is best, Mirag. Rahi’s satisfied, and I’m satisfied, and if you keep whining along like that, I’ll say out what I think should happen to you!”
The woman paled, and her mouth shut with a snap. The man looked at Gird.
“She’s not bad, Marig—Rahi’s her sister.”
“I’m sorry,” It was all he could say. Marig shrugged, an abrupt jerk of her shoulder; the man beckoned with a finger and Gird went to him.
“D’you know much of healer’s arts?” Gird shook his head “Might should learn, then. If I’d been able, I’d’ve put a tighter band on Rahi’s arm. You’ll need that craft, Gird.”
“You’ll get well, and be our healer,” said Gird, but the man shook his head.
“Nay—this is a killing wound, but slower than some. Blood’ll choke me, inside. But you’d best get all away, before more trouble comes.”
A flick of memory, of his old sergeant’s words long ago, came to Gird. “We won’t leave wounded here, to be taken and questioned.”
The man grinned tightly. “I hoped you’d think so. Make it quick, then.”
“Is there anyone you’d—?”
“You’ll do. You made it work.” Gird grimaced; he had to have someone else agree, or it would feel like simple murder. He called Per over, and Aris, the yeoman marshal of Hightop. The wounded man was still conscious enough to give his assent again, and Aris, slightly more experienced than Per, saw at once why it must be done.
But neither would do it. So Gird took his well-worn dagger, and knelt by the man’s side, and wondered how he’d feel if he were lying there, bleeding inside and choking, and how he could be quickest. Worst would be weakness, another pain that did not kill. So he put the whole strength of his arm into it, slicing almost through the man’s neck.
The other badly injured man was unconscious, having been hit in the head, and then trampled under a horse. He quit breathing, with a last gasping snort, just as Gird reached him. Then it was only the hard, bloody work of dragging the corpses together onto a pile of brushwood and thistles, stacking what weapons they could use to one side. The group from Per’s barton left first, to enter their village as best they might without attracting attention. They dared not carry any of the spare weapons, and Gird cautioned them not to take personal belongings from their friends’ bodies.
“They’ll know someone was here,” he said, “to start the fire. But if you’re carrying a tool or trinket someone recognizes, they’ll know you, too, were part of it. This way it can seem that everyone from this village died, and it might spare you trouble.” Not really, he knew: there was going to be trouble for everyone—but there had always been.
They seemed calm enough, even Marig. She had quit sobbing, at least, and she laid the locket she’d taken from her sister’s neck back on her without being told twice. “Can’t we even take Tam’s scythe?” one man asked. “We don’t have that many.” His own crook had shattered. Gird shook his head again.
“With so few scythes, everyone will know that Tam’s is with you. It’ll be taken, but not to your village.” He nodded to Per, who started them off, in trickles of two or three, moving indirectly.
Aris had the other two bartons ready to move out; each one carried his or her own weapon, and some them carried a second, taken from the fallen. Gird dithered over the swords. For one of them to be found carrying a soldier’s sword meant instant death— but to lose all those blades—In the end he let them decide, and ten volunteers belted swords they could not use around their peasant jerkins.
“Are you sure you need to burn the bodies?” Aris asked. Gird said nothing; he’d never imagined doing anything else. It was in all the tales. “We’ll need a good start of them,” Aris went on, when Gird didn’t answer. “They’ll have horses near enough—we don’t know but what the smoke could be seen a long way, and the horses might come anyhow, and find us on the way. I don’t know—I don’t know if I could lead another fight today.”
“You could if you had to,” said Gird, plunged once more into how different it was in stories and reality. But Aris made sense, and he looked at the stacked bodies. The smoke would draw attention; someone would come, and that someone would likely be mounted, and ready for trouble. No smoke, and another patrol would go looking for the first—might not find them right away—but to let the dead lie out unprotected? He squinted up, and saw the first dark wings sailing far up. That alone would draw attention.
“All right,” he said, finally. “No fire.” Lady, bless these dead— these brave and helpless— Aris nodded, clearly relieved, and set off with his bartons. Gird angled away from them, his own new sword heavy at his side. Did I do the right thing? he asked himself. Am I doing the right thing now?
He looked back from a farther ridge, some hours later, and saw a column of dark wings. The woman’s face came to him, that face so composed, even as she died, and the thought of dark beaks tearing her face, gouging out her eyes—he stopped abruptly, and threw up on the short grass, retching again and again, and scrubbing the dried blood on his hands
. Nor could that be the end of it: he had started something, back there, that no crow could pick clean, and no fox bury the bones of—he had started something, like a boy rolling a rock down a hillside, and the end would be terrible.
Word of the Norwalk battle spread as fast among the lords as among the bartons. Gird, sifting reports from his runners and spies, spared a moment for amazement at the varying interpretations. By the end of the first day, that column of carrion crows had attracted another patrol. By the end of the second, the little village of Berryhedge had been put to the torch, and the villagers—those who had not fled the first night—were dead or penned in the nearest fort’s yard, to be dealt with at the next court. The other two bartons had made it home safely, and so far their stolen blades had not been discovered. Bruises and cuts alone were not suspicious; too many of the farmfolk suffered injuries in their work year-round for that to be a sign of collaboration. But all the lords’ guards were alert, watching for smoke from illicit fires, searching for weapons, stopping travelers on the roads. It was, some said, a huge army— an invasion from the neighboring kingdom of Tsaia—the private war of one lord on another—the peasant uprising that had been feared so long. On the strength of one escaped horse, and its tracks, someone even decided that it had been an attack by cavalry, using peasants as infantry. No, argued another: it was an alliance of horse nomads and peasants.
To Gird’s surprise, some bartons now wanted to march out looking for patrols to fight. He reminded them of the dead and wounded, the village destroyed. But this was the first time that his people had fought, in military formation, against their old enemies, and they were elated.
“I can’t see why you aren’t happier about it,” Felis said. “It worked, just as you said it would. Losses, yes: you had warned us, no war without deaths, without wounded. We understand that. But it worked. If we keep drilling, keep working, we can stand against them. And there are more of us; the numbers are on our side.”
“I am happy.” Even to himself, Gird did not sound happy, and he knew it. “I am—I just see the other side. Felis, we have only one real chance: we have to do it all, and do it right, because if we don’t, then everyone who dies has died for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing; it’s for freedom.” Felis scratched his sunburnt nose, and stalked around a moment before coming back to plant himself in front of Gird. “Look—you found a way for us to stand against their weapons and their training. It worked. Not even with the best of us, who’ve been training years now, but with one barton so new they hardly knew their left feet from their right. If you can do it with that, you can do it with anyone. Lady’s grace, Gird, the day you walked into our camp I wouldn’t believe you could get my men to pick up their own filth. But you did. What’s wrong now?”
Gird could not answer. He knew, as he knew the ache in his bones, that it was not that easy. It could not be that easy. But they needed him to say it was, to cheer them on, to give the simple answer he knew was not enough. He felt himself resisting, as he had once or twice when the steward put pressure on him, as if he were a tree, rooting himself deep in the ground. The one thing he knew, the one thing he had to give, was his own certainty when he was right—and if he did not know he was right, he could not say it.
Felis, he could see, did not like his expression or that refusal to rejoice in their victory. Nor did others, who visibly damped their own glee when he was around. He should do it—but when he opened his mouth, stretched it in a smile, nothing came out. We won, he told himself, and the depths of his mind, cautious as any farmer to the last, said We won that time.
He was not even sure what it would take to win, in the way he meant win, in the way that would bring lasting peace. He threw himself into more planning, trying to calculate how many yeomen they had by now, and where, and trying to picture the larger country in which his war would now take place. A few soldiers had defected, men ordered to burn their own villages, or seize their own relatives, men who faced in adulthood what Gird had faced as a boy. They knew more of tactics than he did, and insisted that he had to have support in the towns, as well as the farms.
Meanwhile, the conflicts continued. Another ambush, and another. A guard encampment attacked at night; another village burned, and its fields torched. Like it or not, ready or not, it was on him; he must fly on that wind, or be left behind. Gird drove himself and those he knew best, traveling far to meet the yeoman-marshals of other bartons, to speak to those who were not sure, who were afraid. By autumn, he was moving far beyond the villages and fields he knew best, trusting those he had trained to keep his own group working, to find a safe wintering. This next year would see whole villages rise—even before planting time—and he had to be ready to lead his army in the field.
Chapter Sixteen
Something rasped, in the dry winter bushes, a sound too small for a cry, too great for a wild thing slipping away. Gird crouched, stock still, wondering whether to run now or investigate. It could be—it was probably—a trap. Someone had talked, and the town guard were out here to catch him. The sound came again, and with it another, like a sob choked down. Trickery, it would be. They were trying to lure him that way. But even as he thought this, he was moving, carefully as he might, threading his way through the prickly stiff brush.
In the gloom, he nearly stepped on the naked, bruised body that lay curled on its side. He stooped, after a hard look around that showed nothing but more brush. A man, an old man with thin gray hair and beard. One eye had been gouged out; the other showed only bloodshot white behind an enormous bruise. The man’s pale skin bore many bruises, scratches where the bushes had torn at him, whip marks on his back, burns on his hands and feet. Yet he was alive, his breathing unsteady and loud, but strong enough, and he had a steady pulse at his neck.
Gird squatted on his heels, considering. It was already cold, and would be colder with full night. An old man, beaten and burned, missing an eye—he’d likely die by morning, left here with no covering and no care. But inside the town, the barton waited. Even now they’d be gathering, waiting for him, waiting for the hope that only he could bring. And the old man might die anyway. Gird touched the old man’s shoulder, then wished he hadn’t, for the bloodshot eye opened.
“No…” breathed a tremulous voice.
“You’re safe,” said Gird, knowing he lied, but not what else to say.
“Cold…” came a murmur.
“It’s all right.” His mind went back to his own home, the times he’d teased one of the women for that soothing “It’s all right,” when it wasn’t. He could understand that now. It didn’t make things all right. With a gusty sigh—too loud a sigh, he thought instantly: it would carry in the quiet twilight—Gird stripped to the waist and laid his shirt, sweaty as it was, on the old man’s body. He had to have his dark jerkin for later… but he could spare the shirt.
“I’ll help you,” he said, and put his arm under the old man’s shoulder. Groaning, and obviously trying to smother it, the old man managed to get his arms into Gird’s shirt.
“You—should not—”
“I can’t leave you here to die,” said Gird. He couldn’t help it that the words came out harsh, not comforting. He was late, and he was going to be later yet, and if he had to climb in over the wall, he was very likely to be seen.
“Who?” Now wrapped in the shirt, the old man had recovered scraps of his dignity; he asked with little volume but much authority. Gird chose to misunderstand the question.
“Who beat you? I don’t know; I just found you. You don’t remember?”
The old man held up his hands—longfingered, graceful hands, for all the ugly burns—and said softly, “Esea’s light be with you, the High Lord’s justice come to you, the Lady of Peace lay her hand on your brow—” He paused, as Gird scrambled back, careless of noise. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t curse me!” It was hardly louder than the old man’s murmur, but the anger in it carried.
“Curse you?” The old man
chuckled, a breathy sound much like the whuffling of a horse. “Lad, it’s a blessing—I’m giving you my blessing. Don’t you know that much?”
Gird shifted uneasily. “What I know is, the longer we stay here, the likelier we’ll be seen. Whoever beat you—”
“The senior priest at Esea’s hall,” said the old man. He was sitting up on his own, now, looking with apparently idle curiosity at the burns on his feet. “He called me a heretic, and held what he would call a trial by fire. I call that torture, but the law permits it. And as I lived still when he was done, they stripped and beat me and threw me off the wall.”
“You should be dead!” said Gird, and then reddened, realizing how it sounded.
The old man chuckled again. “That’s what the high priest said, in other words—that I should be dead, for the harm I’d done and might do, and he did his best. The gods, however, sent you—” He reached around, in the gathering darkness, as if groping for a staff, then stretched his hand to Gird. “Here, then. Help me up.”
“But you can’t—
“I can’t lie here in the cold in your shirt. Come now—give me your hand. It’s not so bad as you think.” Gird reached out, and felt the man’s hand slide into his. It was bony, as old hands are, with loose skin over the knuckles, but stronger than he expected. And he could not feel, against his own horny palm, the crusted burns he expected. The old man staggered once, then stood, peering about. “Ah—” he said finally. “There they are.” Gird looked, and saw nothing but the chest-high bushes disappearing into evening gloom. “If you will wait,” the old man said, more command than request, and he plunged into the tangle without making a sound. Gird waited, although he was definitely going to have to climb the wall. The barton would be wondering if he’d been caught.
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