“You do trade jewels,” Gird said. He had seen them once, laid in a precise pattern on black cloth for an apprentice to value.
“We do. We are rockfolk, after all; the rock speaks to us as trees speak to the sinyi.” The gnome sighed heavily at Gird’s blank look. “Elves, that is: the first born singers, those of silver blood. The rock is ours, and the rock returns to us in its treasures what we give of wisdom and loyalty.”
“Like cows,” Gird murmured; the gnome glared him.
“It is nothing like cows. You eat cows.”
Gird did not argue—he could not win arguments with the gnomes—but he thought it was the same. He had loved his cows, cared for them, and out of that love and care had come the bounty of milk and meat and hide.
Most of his time, especially at first, he spent with Lawmaster Karik in a quiet, brightly-lit room lined with shelves full of books— the first he’d ever seen—and scrolls.
Lawmaster Karik insisted that Gird must learn to read and write—to gnomish standards—and calculate with their figures.
“Law is too important to be left to your memory,” he said. Gird could tell that this, like most that he said, was not negotiable. “You must write it down, and in courts of law it must be there for reference. Likewise contracts: you understand the importance of honest exchange, but how can that be adjudicated if the terms of the contract are in question? It must all be written down.”
“But my people don’t usually read and write,” Gird said.
“They must learn.” Lawmaster Karik tapped the heavy slates on which he had marked the gnomish runes. “If it happens that some cannot learn, then someone who reads and writes must stand for that person before the law. We have few so lacking in wit; we must hope that among your people it is also rare. Is it true you know nothing of written speech?”
Gird felt himself flushing again; in a moment he would start sweating. “They—I tried to learn, when my lord’s guard recruited me.”
“Well? Can you read, or not?”
He was sweating; he felt huge and clumsy and stupid next to the precise gray figure of the gnome, whose face never showed emotion. “Very little,” he said unwillingly.
“You will learn. As it is a necessary precondition to your learning how to devise a workable system of law for your imperfect people, and as we did not ascertain before we contracted with you to teach you law, it is to our loss that this is assigned, and you will not incur any greater obligation because of it.” The gnomish clerk who accompanied Lawmaster Karik to the lessons noted this down; Gird suddenly realized that what he had done originally had also been put down as a written contract. “You must learn rapidly, Gird, if you are to be in time to begin your war in the correct season.”
To Gird’s surprise, the gnomish script came easier than the Aarean had—or perhaps it was the absolute lack of distractions, and his fear that he might have to stay there forever if he did not learn. More quickly than he dared hope, he was able to sound his way through a passage of law that the gnomes had translated for him. They had turned aside his attempts to learn their language: “There is not time,” all of them said.
“If it is when a contract made that one party agrees to hold the other not liable in case of death, then it is lawful for the death of that second party to clear the obligation from his own heirs, but if that second party has partners in work, then it is not lawful, even if it is so when the contract is made.” Gird came to the end of that proud of his ability to read, but unsure of the implications for a farmer whose cow dies before it is delivered to the buyer.
Lawmaster Karik said, “A cow cannot be a party to contract: the death of the cow has nothing to do with it. It is the death of the farmer that might apply, if the buyer agreed that the farmer’s death meant the farmer’s heirs need not deliver the cow.”
“But if he has not paid for the cow, why should he expect it if the farmer has died?”
“Suppose he has paid for it, expecting it to come.”
“That’s not how we sell cows,” Gird said. He knew about that; no farmer in his right mind would pay for a cow that did not stand foursquare and in milk before his eyes. The Lawmaster looked at him, and he felt that he must have said something stupid.
“Let it not be cows,” the Lawmaster said, “Even among men, it is common that one buys something for delivery later. One may provide cloth to a tailor, who will make clothes of it. One may send fruit or cheese or grain to a fair, and expect goods or coin to come back.” Gird had to admit that some people did things that way; he thought it was unnecessarily risky. “You, yourself,” the Lawmaster insisted. “You send men out to bring back supplies, do you not?” He did, but most of those were gifts, not paid for, and he knew very well what the gnomes thought of that. To prevent more argument, he nodded.
“So if someone buys something not present, and the person selling it should die before delivering it… then, if it was agreed beforehand, his death cancels the debt?”
“That is what that passage says.”
“But does the seller’s heir keep the price?”
A flicker of interest on the Lawmaster’s face. “An excellent question! That is in the following passage, which you may now read.”
Gird cursed himself silently, and put his thick finger on the first symbols of the next line. Another miserable passage of legalese. The matter turned, he learned as he read, on whether the goods exchanged for the undelivered goods were perishable, consumable, or durable. If someone traded soft fruits for grain, the grain to be delivered, the soft fruits might have spoiled, or been eaten, before the nondelivery occurred (counting, the gnomish law specified, the days between making the contract and expected delivery, before nondelivery could be charged.) Perishable goods fell under one section of law, and consumable goods under another.
“For example,” the Lawmaster said, “if someone trades cloth to a tailor for clothing made… if the tailor cuts the cloth, but then dies before the garment is made… you see that cloth is consumable, and properly so. That is a different situation from a tailor who sold that cloth to someone else, and then died. In the first case, supposing the original contract to have had a death clause, the tailor’s heirs would not have to return the cut cloth. But in the second, they would owe the price they received for it.”
The more he studied, the more Gird saw that the gnomish law did make plain sense. Absolute honesty, absolute fairness in exchange: all the laws came down to this, and nothing intruded. They had a rigid rank structure, but rank had nothing to do with law… at least, the law of exchange, which made all equal… that “one measure for all” that Arranha had mentioned. He could see how it would work among humans—at least, among humans who wanted it to work. It was what he wanted for his people, fair laws; surely they all wanted the same.
Lawmaster Karik began to give him simple cases to examine. Gird found judging harder than he had expected, particularly when Karik insisted that intent and circumstance made no difference to the law.
“If someone means well, but does ill, the ill is still done—and the consequences still exist. Besides, if intent forgives wrong, then any wrongdoer can claim good intent.”
“But it’s obvious,” said Gird. “I could tell if someone meant to do wrong, or just erred.”
“Could you? Suppose someone stole a measure of grain, claiming it was to save a family member from starving…”
“Find out if the person is starving,” said Gird promptly. Karik shook his head. “Suppose the thief had plenty of grain of his own, but chose to steal someone else’s rather than fulfill his own family obligation. Suppose the thief had money, with which to buy grain, but again chose to steal it. Suppose—”
“All right.” Gird held up his hand. “I understand. But surely there are times when circumstances make a difference.”
Karik nodded slowly. “There are. No code of law can speak to all circumstances, even among gnomes, and among your undisciplined people I foresee great confusion. But for every excep
tion you make to a rule, Gird, more will try to force their circumstances into that exception. As plants growing between set stones force them apart, the roots of the plants seek every weakness in the stone.” Gird suddenly realized that Karik identified with the stone—that all the rockfolk would—where his sympathies had always been with the plants that broke stones apart. Even when it meant mending a wall, he had admired the delicate mosses and ferns that had persevered in their attack on it. He pushed this thought away, and came back to the subject. He had always assumed that the gnomes would feel as he did about Kelaive’s treatment of Meris, that the punishment was far more than a boy’s prank deserved. Now he asked.
Karik listened to all the details before saying anything. Then he had questions Gird had never thought of, and only after offered his opinion.
“The right relation of punishment to wrongdoing is a subject in itself,” he began. “In our law, the obligation is to restore, so far as possible, the right relation between the parties. Thus if you should steal a measure of grain, you would have to replace it—or its value—and also pay a fine to the court, to cover the cost of trying the case. We use punishment only for younglings, but some human systems extend punishment to adult humans, and in our view fail to distinguish properly between punishment and restoration. Some things, of course, admit of no restoration: injury that results in permanent loss of function, death, the breakage or loss of some singular, irreplaceable object. This is difficult to judge, although we have standards.
“In the case you speak of, you are not arguing that the wrongdoer was not guilty, but that the punishment was too great. On that basis alone, I would agree. But if the fine for a theft of so much fruit were a certain amount, the thief’s age would make no difference. Circumstance should not change the judgment, assuming the law to be just in the first place. Kelaive seems to have had no law beyond his own pleasure: this does not make the boy’s thieving less wrong, but adds another wrong—the lord’s wrong—to it.”
“I still think there are times—” Gird began. Karik waved him to silence.
“You have never lived under a just code of law; you cannot be expected to understand how it would be. We shall do our best to teach you, and hope you can teach others, and in time your people may approach justice.” With that Gird had to be content.
In the course of learning law, Gird answered the gnomes’ questions about the way he organized his troops. He had not forgotten what Arranha said about the gnomes’ fighting ability. Perhaps he could find something to trade for their knowledge—but nothing occurred to him. The offer came, to his surprise, from the other side, many hands of days after he had made good progress with Karik.
He and Arranha met with a group of gnomes in one of the formal halls; Arranha had explained that he’d been asked to translate. After a few exchanges of formal greetings, one of the gnomes spoke steadily for several minutes. Finally Arranha turned to Gird.
“They would like to contract with you to provide military knowledge in return for your help in a specific battle. They think you need this knowledge, and may not win your war without it; they have been impressed by your diligence in your study of law, and your lawful nature. But, they point out, you seem to have no knowledge of strategy, and little of tactics. This they can provide. Are you interested?”
Of course he was interested, but for what kind of battle did they need his help, if they could defeat the magelords on their own? He framed that question as tactfully as he might, for Arranha to translate, but the gnomes could follow his speech well enough and began to answer at once. They could give him no details until they knew more of his abilities, but they wanted the Aareans lured into a trap… the Aareans were too wary, now, to come after gnomes if nothing else was involved.
Gird stared at the blank grayish faces, all too aware of his own limited experience. He wanted—no, needed—the expertise they had; he had been allowed to see a unit of gnomish guards drilling once, and he lusted after that knowledge. But what would it cost? By their own law, they had to deal fairly with him… though his notion of fairness went far astray from theirs. Was this a place in which they overlapped?
They did not rush him. He sat a long time, or so it seemed, in silence, and when he finally nodded, and then slowly read the contract and signed his name—shakily, but legibly—they bowed stiffly and left him alone with Arranha.
The next day, Lawmaster Karik introduced him to Warmaster Ketik, who turned him over to Armsmaster Setik. Not for the first time, he wondered if the gnomes chose their names to sound like beetle-clicks. It was not a question he could ask. Armsmaster Setik had the first scar he had seen on a gnomish face, two of them, in fact. Gird had expected a larger, brawnier gnome, but Setik was built like all the rest. He walked around Gird like a child around a trade-fair wrestler, looking him up and down, then snapped a question at the interpreter who had come along. “Are all humans your size, he asks?”
Gird shook his head. “No—they come from this high—” he gestured, “to this high—a hand taller than I am. Some are built thin, and some heavy, at every height.”
“And what are your weapons?”
Gird listed them—the ones they’d used so far, and the ones he’d thought possibilities. The Armsmaster listened in the usual expressionless silence, and then uttered a brief comment which the interpreter did not immediately explain. “What?” asked Gird finally. The interpreter’s mouth twitched. “He said ‘Ridiculous!’”
Gird felt the back of his neck getting hot. It was not ridiculous; he had won a battle with just those weapons. The Armsmaster watched him out of black, shiny eyes like seeds. Gird struggled with his anger, all too visibly he was sure, and said, “It worked well enough.” This time the Armsmaster’s question was obvious enough that he began answering before the translator finished, squatting to draw on the floor with his finger the little battle of Norwalk Sheepfolds. The Armsmaster sat on his heels, watching, absorbed in the recital. But ultimately unconvinced; when Gird finished, he began a rapid commentary in gnomish, and Gird knew, before the translator began, that it was critical.
“He says you were lucky. He says you made fundamental errors in placement of scouts, signalling methods, and in choice of ground. He says if you do that very often, you will kill all your people and lose your war.“
Gird had long suspected that his apparent success at Norwalk Sheepfolds had been more luck than skill, but he did not like hearing that hasty analysis by someone who hadn’t even been there. Someone who was used to drilling with experienced (and disciplined) gnomes, who would not have to stop a panicky rout just before a fight, who had time to pick the right ground, and dependable people to work with. He wanted to say all that, until the gnomes understood, but the Armsmaster’s shiny dark eyes offered no sympathy. He wanted to say they’d won anyway, despite his mistakes (if the problem had really been his mistakes) but he met a closed, expressionless face that was not about to change its mind.
“So what should I have done?” he asked, not quite successful at keeping the sarcasm out of his voice.
“He says you will know when he has finished training you.”
Gnomish military training was to the training his old guard sergeant had given as Mali’s cooking had been to his mother’s. He had been proud of his troop’s drill—now, for the first time in his life, he saw absolute precision, and realized how sloppy even his old sergeant had been.
“It did not require much to impress peasants who had nothing,” the Armsmaster said. The three units of gnomes who had just shown off would have impressed anyone, Gird was sure. They had moved forward, backward, sideways, opening and closing ranks, had marched one unit through another, and had come out the other end of a long string of commands in the same close, crisp formation they’d begun. “You will not get this, from your humans who are not all the same size and shape. But you can come closer than you have.”
Gird felt like a clumsy, not-too-bright recruit again, trapped in the middle of a formation of gnomes not
quite shoulder high on him. But he learned—learned not only how to move, but why. That notion of a pincushion that he had had, when he ran around turning his people in place at Norwalk: that had a name, and the right commands to achieve it whenever he wanted, from any other formation. He had always assumed that he needed a large uncumbered space for drill, the gnomes taught him to move a unit quickly and precisely in a room cluttered with supplies, to judge the space available and come up with the commands needed.
He discovered that the wrestling ability which had dumped both Cob and Triga was the very first level the gnomish younglings learned. Armsmaster Setik dumped him repeatedly, no matter what approach he took. “You’re too short,” he complained once, bruised and winded from several hard falls. “I can’t get a grip on you— and besides, you rockfolk are stronger.” Setik grabbed his wrist and pulled him up.
“We are not stronger. We know how to use our strength. Can you lift that?” That was a barrel of meal. Gird shrugged, and tried. It was heavy, but he had lifted heavier. Setik put his arms around it and heaved, but it did not lift. “You see? You are stronger, in plain strength. It can be very useful. But you do not know how to use that strength. You want to jump at me and do the work yourself. Make me do the work.”
They drilled with sticks very similar to those Gird’s people used. Setik insisted they must all be the same, no matter the size of the fighter. Gird thought that was another expression of the gnomish need for order, but Setik disagreed. “First: they must all be the same so that your fighting formation can have the same intervals without chancing an accidental blow. Second: they must all be the same so that when one breaks, or someone drops one, that fighter will be comfortable with any replacement. Each weapon has its own best blows; some are similar, but in battle a single mistake chances death. Chance is your enemy, Gird—do not depend on luck. Depend on skill, drill, strength, endurance, tactics: what you know, what you can do. If that is not enough, chance will not save you.”
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