Surrender None

by Elizabeth Moon

  “You thought this up?” asked Arranha.

  “Not all of it. I thought of wattle for temporary roofs, in our camps, but others thought of leaving sections where we might need them. And a man in Burry thought of putting the piece down where you might want no snow when the shelter was built.” As he talked, Gird braced the foot of the wattle enclosing the end with rocks. His hands began to go numb; he blew on them. Then he reached into his jerkin, and brought out one of his thongs. “We have to tie the roof on, or any little puff will blow it away.” Arranha took the hint, and began lacing the roof to the end hurdle.

  Inside the shelter, it was quite dark. Gird felt around in the protected corner, and found the dry sticks he’d bundled, and the little sack of meal. He thought of the time it was going to take to start a fire with a firebow, and sighed. It would be sensible to ask Arranha to start the fire with his finger—if that worked, and if it cooked bacon it should—but he hated to ask a favor of a lord.

  “If you would let me, I will start the fire,” Arranha said quietly. Gird backed out of the shelter and looked at him. No visible haughtiness, just an old man pinched with cold after a long day’s walk in the snow.

  “In that far corner, then. There’s wood; I’ll find more.”

  Arranha nodded and ducked inside the shelter. Gird did not stay to watch; he gathered an armload of wood, and came back to a shelter that let chips of light out between the chinks of the wattle.

  Inside was warmth and firelight—none of Arranha’s magicks. Was Arranha tired, or simply being tactful? Gird did not know, or care; he was glad enough to see a warm fire. The jug was nestled near the fire, and Arranha had found the niche in the wall with the cooking bowl. He had poured the meal into the bowl, but looked as if he did not know what to do next.

  “Let me.” Gird reached for the bowl, and felt the side of the pot. Warm, but not hot enough. He scrabbled around the floor of the shelter for small pebbles and pushed them into the fire. “For cooking,” said Gird, to Arranha’s surprised look. “I’ll drop them in the jug, to make the water hot quicker. That way it won’t crack the pot.”

  By the time the mush was done, Gird was ready to eat the bowl as well. He swallowed hard, handed the bowl to Arranha first, and forced himself to match spoonful for spoonful the pace Arranha set. They scraped the bowl clean; with a sigh, Gird took it outside to scrub it clean with snow. After a final visit to the outside—Gird insisted on showing Arranha the proper place to use as jacks—they came back to the fire, ready enough for a night’s sleep.

  Or so Gird expected. Instead, Arranha did whatever he did to brighten the light until Gird could see as clearly as in daylight. From the recesses of his clothes, he pulled a scroll. Gird blinked. The man had been naked; Gird had given him a shirt. Then he had had clothes of some kind—but Gird still didn’t have his shirt back—and now he was taking things he had not had out of clothes he had not had. He did not like this. But the alternative was, again, a cold night alone in the woods—and here was warmth and light and someone alive. He gave Arranha the look he would have given one of his men who pulled a stupid trick, but Arranha did not react to it.

  Arranha pointed to the scroll. “Can you read that?” Gird peered at it, his long-forgotten struggles with reading sending cold sweat to his brow. The list looked familiar, the lengths of line and numbers made it certain.

  “No—but I know what it is. It’s the Rule of Aare. I’ve seen it before; we had to learn it in the Kelaive’s Guard.”

  “And what does it mean?” Gird stared at him, and Arranha nodded encouragingly. “The first one, for instance. What does it mean—how does it tell you to live?”

  “Surrender none,” said Gird. “That’s obvious enough. Grab and hold what you’ve got. Don’t quit. Don’t give anything up.”

  “And what is ‘anything’?”

  “Anything—oh, lands, I suppose. Money. Power. Whatever they’ve got that they value—”

  “Value,” said the priest, in that tone that made Gird think he meant more than he said. “Things of value—think, Gird.” He was thinking, and it made him restless. He wanted the ale he had had the night before, to ease the ache in his joints. He wanted to get out of this cold cramped shelter and take a walk across open, sunlit fields. He scowled, hoping that it would pass for thought, and ready to be angry if the priest laughed. The priest did not laugh. “Value,” he said again. “Gird, what do you value most?”

  “Me?” All the usual answers raced through his mind: money, food, ale, the pleasures of the body, possessions, a better bull for his cows. Then slower, deeper, the people he knew, the way of life he wanted to live. But for that he had no words, no way to say it. “Not just money,” he said slowly. “Not things to buy or use, exactly. Friends—a good master, fair dealing in the market and at tax time—family—” Children, he would have said, but it was ill-luck to name them.

  “Peace,” said the priest, casting that name over ordinary life without turmoil or undue trouble, as Gird himself had said that morning. “Justice.” And that stood for all the fair dealing, market or court or steward’s assessment, for a lord who would not trample young grain on a hunt, or refuse the use of medicinal herbs in his wood. “Love,” the priest said last, and it covered family and friends well enough, all the complicated relationships that made a life more than existence.

  “But the law—” began Gird. The priest held up his hand, and Gird stopped short.

  “The old law,” said the priest, “said nothing of peace or justice or love, because everyone agreed on their importance. And the first Rule, ‘Surrender none’ meant precisely that none of these should be given up: not peace, not justice, not love.”

  “But—” began Gird again, and again the priest stopped him.

  “Surrender none,” the priest repeated, this time in a tone of command that would, Gird was sure, have held an army spellbound. “None—none of the Rules themselves, and none of the great goods the Rules were intended to preserve. Our people have forgotten that. Our priests have forgotten that. We have taught them the wrong meanings of those simple commands, and it is these, acted out, which brought them to such actions as trouble you. They think they are meant to grasp more and more, and hold it tightly, sharing it with none, when they were meant to surrender no opportunity of doing right, of spreading Esea’s light, the High Lord’s justice, Alyanya’s peace.”

  Gird thought of the other Rules, so painfully learned when he was a recruit. If indeed the first meant that, then how could the second, the third, be interpreted? “One, for me, and one, for you” had looked, to a peasant boy, like a clear description of the present situation: one rule for the masters, and one for the serfs.

  “No,” said the priest, with a sigh. “It’s easily read that way, and that is in fact the way they read it now, paying tribute to Simyits the Two-faced, the Trickster, the lightfingered lord of luck and gambling. But it reminds us to share, as children do, as we did tonight—one spoonful for you, and one for me. Your people do the same.”

  “But the others?”

  “Define the vigilance necessary to protect the code: touch not, nor ask, nor interfere, where it is not necessary, where it is not your business; but if it is, then go far, swift, silently—never let justice lack because of distance or time or idle chatter. Face the door, yes: evil overwhelms the careless. Learn all the arts, to judge fairly, but staying alive is imperative, or the good judge cannot exist to judge.”

  “It’s—it’s like a grape-leaf,” said Gird, his mind awhirl. “On one side dark green, shiny, and on the other silvery fuzz—can it be the same Rules? And even if it is, what matter to us? We were never of them.”

  “Gird, if a man use a stick to beat a cow, instead of guide it, does that make the stick evil? Would you burn the stick, for being a bad stick, or clout the man?”

  “The man, of course, but—”

  “The Rules of Aare were a tool of law, a stick, if you will—once men used them well, to guide themselves to better ac
tions, and now they use them badly, to beat other men. You’re going to need a stick like that; before you throw this one on the fire, take another look at it.”

  “It still sounds like trickery,” said Gird. He looked closely at the priest, watching for anything he could interpret. Nothing but interest. “If the Rules can be read both ways, then there’s something wrong with them. Why not write laws that can’t be read wrong?”

  “Try it,” said the priest. A smile twitched his lips. Gird felt the back of his neck getting hot. Somehow the man had made a trap, and he’d walked in. Even though he didn’t feel the teeth yet, it was still a trap.

  “I could,” he muttered sourly, thinking hard. What was the trap?

  “It’s not that hard to say a man shouldn’t steal his neighbor’s sheep, or put offal down his neighbor’s well.”

  “And if the sheep got into his garden, or the neighbor had stolen something from him?”

  “If we had fair courts, to settle the first problem—”

  “Very good. And how will you make fair courts?”

  The priest was taking him seriously. The trap must have very fine teeth, because he couldn’t feel them yet, and the man was asking what he’d thought about before.

  “Fair courts should have someone who knows something about the argument—the kind of argument—”

  “Another serf?” asked the priest. This was extraordinary, and Gird paused to look again for any signs of ridicule. None.

  “I’ve wondered about that,” he said cautiously. “A farmer to judge disputes between farmers, a tanner to judge between tanners. But then if a farmer and a tanner have an argument, who? If it’s someone who started as a peasant, say, then he’d need some training, same as if he wanted to be a soldier.”

  “Let’s suppose you have your judge,” said the priest. “A fair man, who knows enough of both sides to understand it, then what?”

  “Plain laws that anyone can understand,” said Gird. “Fair dealing between master and man, between crafter and crofter. If the law says ‘no stealing’ that’s plain enough—”

  “And what is stealing?” asked the priest.

  “Taking what’s not yours,” said Gird. “That’s obvious.”

  “But think, Gird. We all take some things that aren’t ours: air, water, sunlight and starlight—”

  “The water in my well was mine.” Gird clung to that. Air? Sunlight? He’d never thought of himself as “taking” them. There was plenty left for everyone else.

  “The water in your well came from somewhere else, and someone else put it there. Have you done one thing to make it grow, as you work to make your cabbages grow?”

  “No.” He’d never thought of it that way. It was his well, as it had been his father’s well, and he had felt lucky to have a well of his own. His well, his water. But he had worked, himself, to get each year’s crop of barley and oats and cabbages and onions, to take the cows to be bred, to birth the calves. He himself had fed and brushed his animals, pruned and manured his trees, plowed and harrowed and planted and harvested his fields. The water was just there, more in a wet year and less in a dry year, but always there, without his thought. Given, like the air and the light. And he had taken.

  “Would you call that stealing from the gods?” asked Gird. Or, he wondered to himself, were the gifts of flowers and herbs to the merin spirits really a form of payment, and not praise?

  “No, I think not. They gave us to this world, and gave to it also those things we need and cannot make for ourselves, by any labor. To take a gift is not stealing. But I wanted you to think about your law. If you want more than riots, if you want more than killing the magelords and then each other, you must have law.”

  Before he could stop himself, Gird blurted “But I don’t know anything about it.”

  Arranha smiled. “You were just saying you knew what kind of laws you wanted. And once you knew nothing about fighting, but you learned. You can learn this, if you care enough about it.”

  “From you?”

  “From me you can learn some, but not all. You don’t trust me, even now—” He looked closely at Gird, as if to see into his mind. Gird hoped the uneasy feeling inside wasn’t the priest’s inner sight. “So we must find you teachers better suited to your nature and experience. What do you know of the kapristi, the gnomes?”

  “The gray rockfolk? Dire fighters, fair dealers, is what I’ve heard. Not much friends with humans—”

  “Not with our folk,” the priest agreed. “Before we came your people had no problem with them. Some of ours… well, you’ve heard me admit that our folk have gone widely astray from Esea’s path, and not alone in their treatment of you. Some of the wildest thought the kapristi were easy prey, being small and seeming meek. Tried to hunt them, ahorse and afoot. Ignored their boundary markers, tried to move you peasants onto their land to farm or mine.”

  “And?”

  “And were deservedly killed by the kapristi. That’s not what my former colleagues would say, of course, but it’s true. They never tried to invade human lands, or attacked humans where they had not been attacked. But once roused, those small gray folk are as dangerous fighters as any you could hope to train. As well, they live by a code of law that they boast is the fairest and most settled in all the worlds and peoples.”

  Gird could not keep back a grin. “There is such a law?”

  “They claim so. I have met them myself, Gird, as a student of law. They like my people little, but they were fair and just with me. But it is a strict law, so strict that I doubt you’ll find humans agree to follow it. They take no excuses, the kapristi, as they make none; they value fair exchange so highly that they believe free gifts are dangerous, fostering slackness. Would you go so far?”

  “No, among our people, gifts are a sacred duty. Alyanya’s blessings are gifts—”

  “Yet the gnomes would say you return fair exchange, duties of worship, for such apparent gifts, or the gods take vengeance. That’s their explanation for what’s gone wrong with our people. Impiety, failure to return proper service, and the gods punish by withholding the gifts.”

  “And what do you say?”

  Arranha sighed, “I say that my people have erred, by being ungenerous. We value free gifts, even if we misinterpreted your people’s offer of food. Perhaps free gifts are dangerous for gnomes; for humans I think they are necessary. But with the loss of powers came fear, so our people grasp more, and give less, than they did. This hurts you, and you, in turn, will hurt them. That cycle has no end, unless you wish it—unless you declare an end, someday, and forgive the rest of the injury.”

  Gird felt his forehead knot. “What has that to do with justice?”

  Arranha smiled at him, serene once more. “You will find out, Gird, when it is time.”

  Gird felt unaccountably grumpy at that, as if he were a child being told to ignore adult concerns for now. He was, after all, a grown man—widowed—the father of grown children. Arranha seemed to read this on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to confuse you. You are no child; I know that. But I do not know myself exactly why the god sent me to you, or you to me. I was as surprised as you, when you stumbled onto me in that ditch. The god wants something from both of us—”

  “Not your god!” Gird said.

  “Then yours. Believe me or not, as you will, but I have been a priest, a true priest, and I know: your god has shaped your life to some purpose, and I am now part of that purpose. I think—I believe—that some part of that is helping you learn how to shape the future beyond the coming war. Whoever leads your people needs to know more than soldiering.”

  Gird ducked his head. Of course he had thought about it, wondered if the gods had drawn him toward the leadership that now seemed certain. But it did not do to question them too closely, to bring yourself to their notice. The old man was strange, too strange; he wished he’d never found him. And yet—something about him attracted, as the warmth of a fire in cold attracted. Certainly he k
new that they must plan for something beyond war; it was what had bothered him since Norwalk.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

  “But you will,” Arranha said softly. “You will know because you must know, and you will teach others.”

  Suddenly this solemnity in a tattered shelter in snowy woods, this serious discussion of legalities and philosophies, struck Gird as ridiculous. He snorted. “Aye—I can see now: the great gods who could choose you or anyone else will choose a peasant who can hardly read—a serf and son of a serf, who is better with cows than people—to teach a whole people about law. That’s wisdom.”

  Arranha leaned forward. “Do not mock them, Gird. If they have chosen you—and I think they have, and you suspect it, beneath that banter—they will make you what they need. Better clay that can be shaped to their will, and then fired, than broken shards of earlier firings.”

  The laughter had gone, fleeing down the hollow corridors of his mind a nameless fear. “I am not mocking,” Gird said. “I was wishing for miracles.”

  “Those, too, you may have. For now, you have me: no miracle, but an Aarean with some small magicks.”

  “Which once I would have called miracles,” said Gird, sighing. “Well, Arranha, you may be right. But at the moment I cannot stay awake.” The old man chuckled, released his light, and Gird fell asleep in the glow of the banked coals of their fire.

  The next morning was colder, but brighter, as the clouds began to break and a thin sunlight poked through them. Gird and Arranha dismantled the shelter; Gird gathered more wood to replace what they’d used, and tucked it into the corners of the walls. Arranha watched as Gird tried to scatter snow over the wattle sections, now laid flat again. Gird wondered if the face he wore now was truly his own, healed of the injuries, or a face maintained by magic (how?) to fool him. And how was the barton at Burry going to react to this man? He could not lie to them, and pretend Arranha was other than he was.