Surrender None

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Famine rule?”

  “In famine, all share equally, without obligation, even if only one provides. But it must be declared, and accepted.”

  “This is worse than I thought,” said the old man, grimacing. “We were so stupid!” He put the bread and bacon down, and said, “Will you take something from the sack and share it with me?”

  “I can’t cook it,” Gird said, frowning. It didn’t have to be cooked food, of course: bread was already cooked, and cheese was cured. But he had not actually provided this food—it belonged to the sier, who was an ally of the old man. Some people might argue about that. “Do you accept it as my food?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I offer this cheese and bread, my hearth to yours.” Gird set the bread and cheese between them, then broke a piece from each and held out his hand. The old man took the pieces gravely, and offered Gird the bread and bacon again. This time Gird took it, hoping the bacon was still hot. But he waited until the old man had taken a bite before taking one of his own. The old man had not said the ritual words, but he was sure of the intent, and between only two, that was enough.

  The bacon was still warm, and succulent; the grease-soaked bread made a comfortable fullness in his belly. Gird ate quickly, wasting no time, but his mind was full of questions. As soon as he had gulped down the last bite of bread, he turned to the old man. “What did you mean, your people had made a mistake?” The old man, eating more slowly, had not finished; he swallowed the cheese in his mouth before answering. “Gird, among my people the customs differ. Offering food is the sign of subservience: servants offer food to masters. I’m afraid when your people came bringing food, my people thought they were acknowledging their lower rank.”

  Gird sat quietly a moment, thinking this over. The food-bringers, food-givers, ranked lower? When everyone knew that those who can afford to give without taking in return are the wealthy and strong? It was backwards, upside down, inside out: no one could live with a people who believed that. They would kill each other. They would believe—that the strong and wealthy are those who can take without giving—He found he was saying this aloud, softly, and the old man was nodding. “But that’s wrong,” he said loudly. His vehemence was swallowed in the snow, lost in that white quiet. “It can’t work. They would always be stealing from each other, from everyone, to gain their place in the family.”

  “Not quite,” said the old man. He sighed heavily. “Then again, maybe that’s part of the reason why things have gone so badly up here. Back in Aare, there were reasons for that, and safeguards. At least, I think so. It had to do with our magic, our powers.”

  “Like the light. And cooking with your finger?”

  “Among other things, yes. Among our people, rank came with magic—the more magic, the higher rank. One proof of magic was the ability to take, either by direct magic, or by compelling—charming—someone to offer whatever it was as a gift.”

  Gird thought carefully around that before he let himself answer, but it was the same answer that sprang first to mind. “But how is that different from the bullying of a strong child, who steals a weaker’s food, or threatens him into giving it up? It is stealing, to take like that.” And it was precisely what the lords had been doing, he thought. What they had always done, if this man was telling the truth.

  The old man also waited before answering, and when he spoke his voice was slower, almost hesitant. “Gird, our people see it as the natural way—as calves in a herd push and shove, seeking dominance, as kittens wrestle, claw and bite. Yet this doesn’t mean constant warfare in a herd, only a mild pushing and shoving: the weaker ones know their place, and walk behind—”

  “But men are not cows!” Gird could not contain his anger any longer; he felt as if it were something physical, bright as the light he still did not understand. “We are not kittens, or sheep, or birds squabbling in a nest—”

  “I know.” The old man’s voice, still quiet, cut through his objection as a knife cuts a ripe fruit. “I know, and I know something has gone very wrong. But in our own home, in Aare, that sparring for dominance among our folk had its limits, and those limits were safe enough to let our people grow and prosper for many ages. We were taught—I was taught—that with such power comes great responsibility—that we were to care for those we governed as a herdsman cares for his herd—No, don’t tell me, I understand. Men are not cattle. But even you might use that analogy—”

  And he had, the night before, talking to the sier. Gird shivered, not from cold, when he thought of it. No wonder it had gone home, if the man thought of his common folk as cattle already.

  “I still think it’s wrong,” Gird said.

  “It may be. But right or wrong, it’s the other way ’round from your people, and that means my people didn’t understand them from the beginning. We assumed your people intended to submit, agreed to it without conflict: that’s what our chronicles say. So whenever your people resisted, our people thought of that as a broken contract—as if you had gone back on your word.”

  Gird tried to remember what he had heard of the lords’ coming. Very little, though he had heard new things from the men he had been training. Most of the stories began after that, with the settlements growing near the new forts and towns, with the “clearing” of old steadings, the forced resettlement of families, the change in steading custom to conform to the new village laws. Everyone had thought the lords knew they were unfair, knew they were stealing—but had they not known? Had they thought that all they did was right, justified by some agreement that had never been made?

  “Not all,” the old man said. “Some things were forbidden in old Aare, which our people do here. The worship of the Master of Torments, for example: that they know is evil, and those who do it are doing it knowingly against the old laws. A contest of strength or magery is one thing, but once it is over, the winner has obligations to the loser, as well. But the basic misunderstanding, Gird, I believe I discovered tonight, from you. Your way seems as strange to me, I confess, as mine must seem to you—but strangeness is not evil. What we do with it may be evil.”

  “When you offered me that food,” Gird said, “were you then declaring yourself lower in rank? Or were you trying to fool me into thinking that’s what you were doing?”

  The old man started to answer, then stopped, then finally said, “I thought—I think I only meant to calm you, to make you think well of me. In one sense, that is claiming a lower rank, because it means I care that you think well of me—in another—I don’t know. I didn’t think, I just did it.”

  “I felt,” Gird said carefully—carefully, because he did not want to hurt this old man, even now, “I felt like a stubborn animal, being offered a bait of grain if it will only go through the gap.”

  A grin, across that close space. “You are stubborn; you would not deny that. I did not mean you to feel that, but given what your people think about offering food, wouldn’t anyone feel so in such a circumstance? Have you ever—”

  “Yes.” Had the men he had fed felt that way? Demeaned, degraded? But it was not always so; he had taken food himself, gladly, acknowledging temporary weakness. Sick men had to be fed by healthy men, children by adults, infants by mothers. Was milk from the breast demeaning to a baby? Of course not. Yet—he worried the problem in his mind, coming at it from one side then another. The old man sat quietly and let him alone. “There are times,” he said, “when it is right to be the one fed. Times no one minds. If someone’s sick or hurt—or children—but grown folk, healthy grown folk—they feed themselves. In a way, living on another’s bounty is like being a child again. Maybe that’s why it means giving obedience.”

  “Probably.” The old man nodded. “It’s interesting that you have the importance of having food to give, but absolute prohibition against taking it by force from each other. The force is used against the land, I suppose, in hunting or farming.”

  “Not against,” Gird corrected. “With. To help the land bear more. Alyanya is our
Lady, not our subject.”

  “So you see even the gods as those who can give, not those who take?”

  “Of course. If they have nothing to give, they are not gods, but demons.” Gird nodded at the cold dark beyond their shelter. “As the cold demons steal warmth, and the spirits of night steal light from the sun.”

  The old man smiled. “This day is stealing my strength, Gird, and I cannot hold this light much longer. Not if I’m to have warmth enough until dawn. But before the light goes. I have an apology. I have withheld the courtesy of my name, although I knew yours. I am Arranha, and I am glad to have you as companion in this adventure.”

  Gird turned the name over in his mind; it was like nothing he had heard. “I thought the lords had many names—four or five.”

  “So they do, but priests have only one, and mine is Arranha.” With a last smile, Arranha let the light fail—the light Gird had yet to understand, and the cold, snow-clean air gusted for a moment under the shelter. Gird felt Arranha curling up in his leafy nest, and thought of walking away. But he could not blunder through a wood in the dark and snow, not and hope to live until morning. With a silent but very definite curse, he lay down, wriggling his way into the leaves until he was curled around Arranha. His back was cold, but Arranha, protected on the inside, was warm as a hearth. Gird was sure he could not sleep—then began to worry that they might sleep their way into death in the cold—and then slid effortlessly into peace and darkness.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning was cold and raw but Arranha was awake, and a milder warmth filled their shelter. Gird rubbed his eyes, and looked out to see snow covering all, under a gray sky: the light was silvery. The old man sat hunched, staring at his hands. Gird watched him warily. Was he about to do something? Was he doing something now, something Gird could not see? Then a cramp in his back jabbed him, and he had to stretch. Arranha turned to him, and Gird continued with a yawn that cracked his jaws.

  “Sorry,” he said afterwards, but even to himself he did not sound sorry. Arranha merely smiled. Silently, he divided the rest of the bread and cheese, and Arranha shared it. The jug, when he shook it, was full. He looked at the old man, who smiled again.

  “I filled it with snow, and melted it. It’s not ale, but it will do.” Gird sipped, found it water with only the faintest taste of the ale that had been in the jug, and drank thirstily. Arranha went on. “It is not snowing now, and I think it will not for some hours. If you wanted to travel, now is a good time.”

  Gird scratched his jaw beneath his beard. “What about you? I would help you to someplace safe.”

  Arranha laughed aloud. “Safe? For me? Gird, I am safer with you than anywhere else I can think of, in the world of men.”

  “But surely you have friends—”

  “None so rash as to harbor me now, when Esea’s Hall of priests has declared me heretic and traitor. They intended to kill me, Gird—you saw that.”

  “But—sir—” Gird tried to think how to put it. The man was a priest, and had great powers, but he would hardly be accepted by Gird’s troop of peasant rebels. He began as delicately as he could. “I have my work—you seem to know that, and what it is—and the people I work with, my people, they—they won’t take to you.”

  Arranha showed neither anger nor surprise. “You do not want me with you?”

  Gird found he was scratching his ear, this time. “Well—it’s nothing against you yourself, but—you’re one of them, sir. One of the lords, and that’s who we’re trying to fight. Sir.”

  “Do you know what you’re fighting for, Gird, or is it all against?” Gird must have looked as puzzled as he felt, for Arranha explained. “Do you have a vision of something better, a way to live that you want, or are you fighting only against the lords’ injustice and cruelty?”

  “Of course we have ideas,” Gird said. They were bright in his mind, those pictures of what the world should be like. He was sitting at the old scarred table in his own cottage, with Mali and the children around it, all of them with food in their bowls, laughing and talking. In the cowbyre were his three favorite cows, all healthy and sleek; his sheep were heavy-fleeced and strong. He could look around the room and see his mother’s loom with a furl of cloth half-woven, tools on their hooks, Mali’s herbs in bunches, the sweet smell of a spring evening blowing in the window. Outside would be the fields, with the grain springing green from the furrows, the smallgarden already showing the crisp rosettes of vegetables, the beans reaching for their poles with waving tendrils. From other cottages as well he could hear the happy voices, even someone singing. He felt safe; he knew the others felt safe. That was what he wanted, what they all wanted.

  “Can you tell me?” asked Arranha gently.

  Gird tried, but the memories were too strong, too mixed: sweet and bitter, joyful and sorrowful, all at once. His voice broke; his eyes filled with tears that were hot on his cheeks, and cold on his jaw. “It’s just—just peace,” he said.

  Arranha sighed. “Coming to peace by starting a war is tricky, Gird. You’ve never known war; I have.”

  Gird set his jaw, and blinked back the tears. “It’s war enough, when my family and my friends die for nothing.”

  “No. It’s bad, but it’s not the same. You’re starting something bigger than you can see. Much bigger. You need a better idea of where you’re going, what you will need. Do you know anything at all about law?”

  Gird sniffed, rubbed his nose on his arm, and thought about it. Law. There were the customs of his village, and the customs all his people shared, from the days when they lived in steadings within a hearthing. Then there were rules the lords made, and that law he had had to memorize when he was a recruit. “A little,” he said cautiously. Arranha looked at him, as if wondering what that meant, and sighed again.

  “This is going to take longer, and it would go better in a warmer place. Where would you go from here?”

  The abrupt change of topic jarred; Gird wondered what the old man was up to. Something, surely. But he was tired of arguing, of his own emotions. Let the old man come along, at least for now. “We left the city by the east gate,” Gird said. “And then we walked east, and then south but only a little. So back south, and a little west—I don’t know this country well, up here.”

  “The way you’re speaking of, there’s a village called Burry—is that what you meant?”

  “Aye.” In Burry, the barton was already five hands strong, and the yeoman marshal had relatives in three other villages.

  “Can we reach Burry today?”

  “No. But there’s a place—” Gird did not want to talk about it, and Arranha did not press him. He ducked out of the shelter, into the distanceless light of a cloudy day over snow. They were going to leave tracks, clear ones, and the place they had slept would be obvious even if he tried to take down the shelter. But he could not see the road from here, or hear any travelers. Perhaps no one would happen by until another snowfall.

  He led Arranha further into the wood, away from the road. The silence scared him; it felt unnatural. He reminded himself that he was not used to being away from a village in winter. Even near camp, he could hear the noises of other people. It might be nothing but this unfamiliarity that had his neck hair standing up, a tension in his shoulders. Arranha picked his way through the snow with little apparent effort, though he left tracks. Gird made sure to look, every so often.

  When they came to the trail Gird had taken toward the city two days before, he almost walked across it without recognition. Its white surface lay smooth in both directions, trackless. He turned and led Arranha along it, as he looked for the place they could shelter overnight.

  It was getting darker, and he was afraid he might not recognize it in snow, when he spotted the three tall cedars above a lower clump, and turned off the trail. Arranha had said nothing for hours. Now he said, “Is this a village?”

  “No—it’s an old steading. Cleared by your folk, to settle a village.” He wasn’t sure that wa
s why it had been abandoned; it might have been much older than the lords’ coming. “It’s empty,” Gird added. “No one lives here, or nearby.” He pushed through the bushy cedar boughs, shivering as they dumped their load of snow on him, and entered the old steading. He bowed, courteously, to the old doorstep, still centered between the upright pillars that had held the door. On either side, broken walls straggled away, outlining the shape of the original buildings in brushstrokes of stone against the white snow.

  When he looked back, Arranha had pushed through the cedars as well, and was bowing as Gird had, though he looked uncertain of his welcome. So he ought, Gird thought. This was old; this had belonged to no one but his own people, and Arranha was a stranger. “Do you know how many lived here?” Arranha asked. Gird shook his head. “It was a steading; my Da said a steading was three or so families. Less than a village—four hands, five? A large steading might have more, but I think this one was small.” He led the way again, past the empty useless doorway, along what had been the outside of the main building, to an angle of low wall in what had been an animal shed or pen. Here two corners had survived the original assault and subsequent weather, to nearly enclose a space just over an armspan wide, and two armspans long. Gird thrust his hand into the cold snow in the larger space outside, feeling about, and grunted. “Here—help me lift this.” This was a lattice, woven of green withes and vines, and lightly covered with leaves; it would have been unnoticeable lying flat among the ruins. Now, it fitted across the space between the walls, an instant roof.

  “You knew this was here—you had it ready!” Arranha sounded excited for the first time.

  Gird let himself grin. “Aye. Thought it up. Looks like nothing but old walls, but it’s as good as a house. Almost.” He had lifted his end carefully, so that the snow did not slide off; it was heavier that way, but it would look less obvious. He hoped. When they had it braced in place, he looked at it again. Those two side walls had been intended to support a slanted roof, he was sure—he hoped his roof would slant enough to drip on the wall, not inside. The end wall should be lying within the enclosed space; he reached into the snow again, and found the end. He pulled it out, careful to bring its load of snow with it. This piece was light enough for one to move; he shifted it until it almost closed the gap. Now they had a small house, its walls chest-high, topped with a slanted roof with its back to the north wind. Its floor was almost snow-free, because that snow had come out with the end wall.