“She’s gone to tell the sier where we are,” warned Kef. “You really made her furious—”
“I said what I had to.” Gird rubbed his face, hoping the headache would go away, and wondering what, in fact, he had said. He hadn’t drunk that much, and the stupid woman shouldn’t have kept nagging at him.
“I know, but—” Kef peered at him. “You should be careful, Gird; that stuff Selis makes would take the hair off a horsehide.”
“I’m fine.” He wasn’t, but he would be with a can of cold water over his head and something to eat. If they had anything left. He clambered up, stifling a groan as stiffness caught him in every joint, and looked around.
Something was wrong. He couldn’t tell exactly what, but instead of the busy, determined life of the camp he sensed uneasiness, an almost furtive bustle in the distance, and ominous stillness around him. None of his cohort marshals were nearby, and yet he saw no drill in progress, and heard no tramp of feet out of sight. He smiled at Kef, and started toward the hearth. It was bare; the fire burnt out and the stones barely warm. One cookpot sat to the side, and in it was one cold sodden lump of porridge.
“That’s yours, then,” said a woman walking by—Adar, he remembered after a moment. Widowed, mother of two surviving.
“You’ve eaten?” he said to Kef, who was still hovering near him.
“Oh yes. Hours ago. I mean—”
“You mean I overslept because I was drunk,” said Gird, and prodded the porridge to see how firm it was. He broke off a smaller lump and ate it with difficulty, watching Kefs eyes. They wavered, not meeting his gaze.
“Well—you had a lot to do last night—”
“Is that what they all think?” He took another small lump, and gulped it down without trying to chew it. The stuff would hold slates on a roof in a gale, he thought.
“Oh no. I’m sure they don’t—although some—I mean someone said, but I don’t know who—”
Gird finished the porridge, cold and gluey as it was, and thought about it. Rahi’d told him to be careful about drinking too much, but she’d always said that. Tam and Amis, too—but that was years ago. And some people always complained that others drank too much. Far as he was concerned, it was those who had neither head nor heart, trying to deny others what they themselves couldn’t enjoy. Yet he remembered old Sekki well enough, who always smelled of sour ale and staggered when he walked, day or night— who died in a stinking puddle of his own vomit, one night. The sergeant had pointed him out to Gird and the other recruits—and he knew the sergeant’s warnings against drunkeness didn’t come from lack of taste for it.
So—had he been drunk last night, and had he thrown away five good yeomen (he wouldn’t count Binis) by losing his temper in a drunken rage? Evidently some of the others thought so. Could they all be wrong? They’d all been wrong before, but so had he.
His head throbbed, and the porridge sat uneasily in his belly. He hadn’t been really drunk, but then again he had to consider how the others felt, what they thought. He picked up the cooking pot and started for the creek.
“Where are you going with that?” came a sharp voice from behind him. He turned, and grinned at Adar. She reddened.
“Going to clean it,” he said. “Don’t we have a rule, that laggards to table clean the pot?”
Her mouth fell open, then shut with a snap. “But you—but you’re—”
“I can dip water and scour, Adar,” he said mildly. “And one thing about rules, they’re for all of us. I’m no different.” He turned away before she could offer, and stumped down the bank. The first splash of cold water went on his face, then he dipped the pot, scooped up a handful of sand and small gravel, and swirled it around. When he felt with his fingers, the gluey coating of dried-on porridge was still there. Blast. He’d have to really work at it. He looked around for rushes or reeds. Adar was standing on the bank, watching him.
“Here,” she said. “This makes it easier.” She handed him a lump of porous gray rock, very light for its size. Scrapestone, or scourstone: he remembered seeing similar lumps for sale in city markets, priced far above a village peasant’s ability to pay. Mali had always used rushes. But the scourstone took the porridge off the pot quickly, and his knuckles hardly hurt at all. He gave the stone and the rinsed pot back to her.
“Does it pass your inspection?” he asked.
A smile tugged at her mouth. “Better than my breadshovel did yours. I never would have expected you to know how to clean pots.” He thought of saying it was simple enough, like most women’s work—which had been his father’s comment when his mother was sick—but he thought better of it. Simple work could be hard, and since it had to be done, better those who did it should take pride in it.
“When my mother had fever,” he said, “my father bade me do kitchen work—my brother’s wife was sick, too.”
“Ah. And can you cook?”
He grinned, remembering burnt porridge and bread that baked stone hard outside but soggy within. “No, not well. I’ve tried, and we didn’t starve, but no one would choose my porridge or bread. The Lady gave me wit to plow and raise the grain, not prepare it.” He did not mention his hearthcakes, which had helped him win over a campful of hungry men. They were poor fare compared to real food, and he knew it.
“You have a brewer’s taste for ale,” she said, then colored again. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did. And I gather you all agree. How much did I drink last night?”
“Too much,” she said. “A pot or so, that I know of.”
He wanted to explain about the pain in his knees and hips and shoulders, the steady ache that sapped his strength some days, the tension and fear, that ale relieved. But he remembered—and knew she remembered—the tonguelashing he’d given young Black Seli for getting drunk in a tavern and blabbing about the nearest barton. Black Seli’s excuse had been a fever, and he hadn’t put up with it. Rules are for all of us. I’m no different. Why had he said that, right out loud. It was true, but still. No one knew how hard it was, dragging a mob of ignorant peasants through one battle after another. He looked at Adar, and realized that she was not going to accept that argument. Neither would he, if someone else gave it.
Gird sighed, heavily, and said, “Well, you may be right. Times before, I drank too much, and I thought I had my reasons.”
“Most men have,” said Adar, “At least they say so.”
“Yes. Well, I can’t stop last night now—”
She cocked her head at him. “No—and you can’t stop the results of it, either.”
He had not thought Adar was so forthcoming. She’d been a quiet one, hardly speaking in drill, always busy at some task but never chattering with the other women. You said women had brains too, he reminded himself. You said men should listen to them. But it was different, Rahi or Pir and this stranger. He wasn’t going to justify himself to her, and he wasn’t going to make promises, either. He climbed the bank, regaining the advantage of height, and looked down at her.
“I’ll have to try,” he said. Then he went on, to hunt for at least one of his cohort marshals.
Kef caught him halfway across the camp, by which time Gird was sure that the problem was much bigger than he’d thought. All the firepits were cold, when someone should have been brewing sib and baking for the noon meal. Those few he could see all looked to be tying up bundles.
“Gird! Red Seli wants to see you.” Kef was breathless; he must have run some way. “Back there,” he said, waving an arm to answer Gird’s unasked question. “In the woods near the spring.”
“Where are the other marshals?” asked Gird. Already he knew they might have deserted.
“Ivis took his cohort up the river, to gather fuel; Sim’s looking for a better campsite—”
“Better than this?” Gird looked at the clean-running creek, and the heavy woods around that hid them from almost all directions. And they had watchers on the high rocks, the only point that overlooked the cam
p.
Kef looked down. “They’re afraid Binis will tell,” he said. “Or those new ones.”
“So they all decided to move while I slept.”
“They tried to wake you, but—” Kefs voice trailed off. Gird’s headache was no worse than the pain in his heart. He had told them the importance of a leader’s ability to stay alert, to wake quickly and able to deal with emergencies. He had shown them— and would they distrust him now, because only once he drank too much ale? Could he not have any relaxation?
He remembered the gnomes suddenly, their stern faces and inflexible rules. Their warmaster would have had something to say about “relaxation,” and not what he would like to hear.
“What did I say to Binis?” he asked Kef.
“You don’t remember?”
“If I remembered, I wouldn’t need to ask you, now would I? Tell me.”
Kef looked down, scuffed his toes in the leafmold, and then stared past Gird’s shoulder. “You said—you said you didn’t care what the steward had done, that the yeoman-marshal had a right to run his barton any way he pleased, and if he didn’t want a gaggle of whining women treating war like a village brawl over oven-rights that was fine with you, and if she didn’t have a better reason than that for joining up, she’d never last a day of camp discipline— that you had enough half-witted, lovesick wenches hanging around already, bothering your soldiers with nonsensical notions—that for all you cared she could take her ugly face to the duke and see what good it did her—”
“I said that?”
Kef nodded. “More than that—and livelier than that, if you take my meaning. You brought up every god I heard of, and a few I haven’t, and threatened to unbreech her in front of the whole camp and tan her backside.”
“Oh gods.” His heart sank. He had never suspected himself of that kind of thing. He thought Binis was ugly, and just the sort of woman he disliked, but that was no excuse for what he’d said.
“That’s when Rahi tried to get you to be quiet—”
“Rahi—!”
“And you told her to shut her damnfool mouth or you’d show her you were still her father—?”
“Mmph.” Humor pricked his misery. “I daresay she didn’t take that well.”
“No—she said ale was no one’s father, and stormed off—that’s when Binis left. And the others.”
Gird scrubbed his head with both hands. Worse than he’d thought. Worse then he’d ever imagined—how could he have done such a thing? He could see, with the clear vision of the morning after, just how that would affect all the women. He had had no problems with them before; they had done all he asked of any soldier, and now—he shivered. “Where’s Rahi?”
Kef was staring at the ground again. “Gone. She went off with Sim. I—I think she’ll be back.”
At least his son had been far away, off scouting with a small group in the west. Maybe he could get this straightened out before Pidi came back. He had the feeling it was going to take a long time, and a good bit of unpleasantness.
“Well. Thank you for telling me.” That surprised Kef; he had expected anger, Gird could see. “I needed to know what had set everyone off. Now I do, and I’m not surprised.”
“You’re not?”
Gird shook his head. “No—why would I be? I didn’t know what I was saying, Kef—you don’t have to believe that, but I didn’t. That’s not an excuse; I’ve told you all that, and it has to apply to me, too. I was wrong to get drunk, wrong to say all that to Binis—”
Kef scuffed the ground again. “That yeoman-marshal, he did say as how she’s hard to live with—always picking quarrels, complaining—that’s why he didn’t welcome her—”
“That’s as may be.” Gird took a deep breath, and it out in a long sigh. His head still hurt, but he could see, between the waves of pain, what he should have done, and would have to do now. “I was still wrong, and I can’t afford to be wrong like that. Red Selis first, and then I’ll find the other marshals: we need to have a conference.”
Red Selis, who had taken over Felis’s unit after the guardhouse defeat, was so relieved to find Gird sober, cooperative, and reasonable that he looked almost foolish. Gird did his best to project calm confidence. They discussed the transport of water to an alternate campsite, if one were found, and the possible storage of some equipment near the spring in case they came back to this site later. When all this was settled, Gird looked Red Seli straight in the face.
“I played the fool last night, and you have cause to mistrust me—what about it?”
Red Selis’ face turned redder than his hair. “Well, I—I was going to say, sir—since you mentioned it first—it’s not that we don’t trust you—”
Gird resisted the temptation to shake him. “Of course you don’t, right now: what I’m asking is, do you want to quit? Go home?”
“Quit!” Startled, Red Selis stared slack-jawed a moment, then shook his head. “No, ’course not. Just for one bit of temper? It’s just that—I dunno, exactly, but—”
“If I’d done that in the midst of battle, it could’ve killed us all,” Gird said harshly. “If someone else had, I’d be ready to break his neck for him—might even try. It’s worse for me—I’m supposed to be showing you how. Tell you what, I never knew it to take me like that before—not that I recall. It won’t do: you know it, and I know it. That’s well and good: no more of it for me. But to mend last night’s bad work—I have to know if you’ll trust me on this, long enough to see that I mean it.”
“Well—yes.” Red Selis looked thoughtful. “I never—I mean I thought you’d be angry, like, that we’d seen you—”
“I am angry, but with myself. It’s not your fault.”
“’Twas my cousin made the brew—” muttered Red Selis. Gird had forgotten that.
“It’s not his fault either. You’ve heard me say it to others: the rule’s the same for all. I was flat stupid, that’s what it is, and it won’t happen again.” As he said that, he wondered—how was he going to tell when he’d had too much? Surely it wouldn’t mean giving up ale altogether? He could see sidelong looks from those of Red Selis’s cohort who were close enough to hear. At least they were there, and not on their way home.
By nightfall, Gird had visited each of his marshals. Sim had not found a really good campsite; the army was dispersed among several temporary sites, and, to Gird’s eye, had lost perhaps one in seven. He didn’t do a formal count, and no one told him. Gird had not seen Rahi all day; he had not wanted to ask Sim about her. He had asked the marshals to gather everyone briefly, and in the dusky forest light of early evening he faced his army in a clearing not big enough for them all. He could feel hostility, fear, and even more dangerous, detachment—too many of them had decided they didn’t care what he did.
“How many of you,” he began, “saw what happened last night?” Arms waved, and a general growl of assent. “And how many of you saw it coming? How many noticed I was drunk before that?” Fewer arms, and a subdued mutter. Finally one clear voice from behind a screen of trees.
“I seen it days ago, the way you started goin’ to the ale-pot every night. Said to my brother, you just watch, and he’ll go the way of our uncle Berro, see if he don’t, and you did.” That brought a scatter of chuckles, but some nodding heads.
“Well,” Gird said, “you were right. I just hope your uncle Berro never made such a fool of himself, and never said so much he wished he hadn’t said.”
“I always heard as how drunks say what they really mean,” said someone else, challenging. A woman’s voice. Gird had expected that.
“My Da said, the first time he found me drunk, that a drunk’s mind was two years behind him, at least.” He paused, looked around, and felt a flicker of interest from them. “If you’d asked me, back when I had a home and a wife and children, if I thought women could make soldiers, I’d have said no. I’d never seen one, and neither had any of the rest of you. When Rahi came, my own daughter, I doubted her at first. But she had n
owhere to go, and I knew my own blood was in her.”
“And you told her—”
“Aye. Drunk, which I shouldn’t have been, I told her a bunch of nonsense. Maybe I do think that, down in the old part of me, in my past. But here and now, I mean what I’ve said afore about women. You know what that is, and how I’ve made the rules here. And kept them, until now. I let my own daughter—and you that have daughters know what that costs—choose to put her body in front of pikes and swords. I meant all I said, and my pledge is still that what laws we make afterwards will be fair to women as to men.”
“Fine, then, when you’re sober—but what if you’re pickled in ale when you write the laws?”
“I won’t be.” He waited a moment, to see how they’d take that, and was surprised at the change in the atmosphere. Most of them were listening, were believing him. The others were uncertain now, no longer detached or hostile.
“I may be pigheaded, but I’m not that stupid: I made a mistake, a big one, and it’s cost all of us, not just me. I’m not going to do it again.”
“Going to let someone tell you to quit?” asked the same woman’s voice. Gird had not thought farther than keeping away from ale altogether.
“Good idea,” he said, surprising her. “Who would you trust?” A long pause was followed by several muttered suggestions, mostly marshals. The woman spoke up again.
“Rahi?”
“Tell you what,” Gird said. “I’ll talk to Rahi, Cob, those others you mentioned—and as far as the ale goes, they can tell me what they think. Is that fair?”
This time almost all of them agreed. “But what about Binis?” asked another woman. Gird nodded, and waved quiet those who tried to hush her.
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