"Like a cobble," one of his fellow soldiers informed him.
Korgash turned back to look up at Dirk. Slowly, he reached up to fumble at his sleeve.
"Keep it," Dirk told him. "You just earned it back."
Korgash stared at him. Then, slowly, he grinned. Dirk reached down. Korgash caught his arm, pulled himself to his feet, and came to attention as much as he could. "What's your order, sergeant?"
"To sit down until you recover," Dirk said, still breathing heavily, "and to have a drink."
Korgash smiled again. "Yes, sergeant!" He moved to sit down, started to fall, but two of his buddies jumped forward to catch him and ease him down on a bench.
As they gathered around him, praising and reassuring, Cort stepped over to Dirk. "Very imp ... impreshive, Shergeant. But those ... tricksh won't work ... twishe. "
"They don't have to," Dirk assured him. "I've got fifty more."
"The'll try t' uzhe 'em on you," Cort warned. "They're not as easy as they look," Dirk answered.
But Cort wasn't listening; he had reached the remorseful stage of drunkenness. He turned away, shaking his head and muttering, "Shouldn't'a letcha do it. Korgash's lethal, prob'ly a changeling."
"Changeling?" Dirk frowned. "Isn't he a little big to be an elf left in somebody else's cradle?"
"Big?" Cort frowned up at Dirk, then squinted, trying to bring him into focus. " 'Course he's big! Fair Folk're bigger'n him!"
"Are they really?" Dirk said slowly.
"Ev'body knowzh 'at." Suddenly, Cort's knees gave way. He folded onto a bench, blinking.
The soldiers didn't notice; they were busy putting the chairs and tables back in order. Dirk sat down to keep Cort company.
"Ale for the officers!" A wide trooper slammed two tankards down on the table. "After a fight like that, sergeant, you need it!"
"Thanks, uh, private." Dirk managed to spot the man's single stripe as he turned away. Then he turned back to pull the ale away from Cort, but the lieutenant already had the flagon tilted to his lips, gulping thirstily, dribbles running down at each corner of his mouth. Dirk raised a cautioning hand, but Cort managed to lower the empty flagon and say, "Can't trusht women, shergeant," before his eyes closed, and he slumped forward onto the table. .
A nightbird called, and the family came rushing back into the house; even the grandmother hobbled as quickly as she could.
"Nightbirds don't call in the daytime," Gar said to the ancient, tangle-haired, sack-clothed man next to him, "and the sun hasn't quite set yet. Was that their lookout?" He knew the answer, of course, but had to make it look as though he didn't.
"It was," Ralke told him. Bilar's family had brought him gypsum to whiten his hair and beard and cooking grease to make it stringy. He looked very much like any of the village grandfathers, and this house had none anymore. "Get under the straw, quickly!"
Gar dove in and held his breath. Small feet came pattering, and children heaped the mouldering, foul-smelling straw high over him. Gar wondered if they only had clean bales every fall.
The inside of the but smelled of stale sweat and staler cooking odors; the aroma had slapped Gar in the face when he'd stepped in through the hidedoor. The place was dark and foul; he'd stepped to the side carefully, and waited for his eyes to adjust. Then he'd wished they hadn't.
The dwelling was a circle twenty feet across, a dugout four feet down from ground level with the haystack-thatched room starting where the earthen walls left off. The thatch, like the sleeping pallets, was of old and rotting straw-again, probably replaced only in the fall, when the harvest yielded fresh heaps. In fact, Gar doubted whether it was properly thatched indeed, or only piled on layer by layer, like the haystack it resembled. There was a wooden frame to hold it up, made of bent tree branches, but no boards to bridge the spaces between them, only a sketchy network of wither. A fire smoldered in a central pit, directly below a smokehole. The floor was earth, hardened by generations of calloused feet. There was one pitiful attempt at a rug, maybe six feet square, woven of rags. Heaps of soiled straw lay along the foot of the wall, beds for the family. Daytime living centered around the fire.
There wasn't even an attempt at privacy.
The posts that held up the roof served for hanging two pots and pans, a scythe, several hoes, and a saw. There were no weapons, of course.
"So this is how the average family lives in this land," Gar muttered.
Ralke nodded. "Now you see why everyone dreams of going to the towns. Of course, most folk there live no better than this, but there's always the chance of making enough money for a better life. Here, there's no chance at all."
Now, an hour later, Gar lay under the straw, trying not to breathe the odors of mildew and stale sweat. A sudden weight landed on his hips, then spread out from his knees to his shoulders; he grunted. A clear female voice told him, "Pardon, sair, but ah mun hide ma face-an' they'll ne'er think I'm layin' atop a man."
"Thanks for the disguise," Gar wheezed. Then both he and the girl settled into waiting in suspense for the soldiers to come stamping in. They had passed by four hours before, quickmarching through the village and roaring at the peasants to get out of their way-laughable, really, considering that everyone had disappeared into their houses the second the sentry had called, "Boots coming!" But they had trotted out of the village as quickly as they had come in, hot on what they thought was the caravan's trail-after all, the mules had to stay on the road, didn't they? They scarcely spared a glance for the fields, and didn't seem to notice that there were more field hands, and more mules, than normal.
Now, though, they must have searched everywhere the caravan could have gone in so short a time, and were coming back to double check.
"One side!" a boot bellowed as he burst through the doorway. "Let's see what you're hiding!" Then he noticed the girl lying on the straw. He laughed low and in his throat, as he, strode over, reaching down. "Here now, sweetmeat! Don't hide your face from me! Turn and show me your beauty!"
"None of that!" a voice barked, and another boot came in.
The family moaned and cringed away.
"There's no time for skin-games now," the brute snapped. "Besides, if she's worth looking at any, the boss will want her!"
"Aye, but if she's only half-pretty, she's our meat," the boot protested.
"Then come back another day! We're looking for merchants now, not toys!"
"As you will, brute," the boot said with disgust. He drove his toe into the straw.
There was enough of it to weaken the impact, but Gar still felt the blow on his shin, then on his thigh, his belly, and his chest. He clamped his jaw to keep from grunting at the pain.
"Nothing there but a year's rot," the boot said in disgust. "It's packed tight from a year's sleeping. How can you live like this? You, there, boy! Remember when you grow up-boots get clean straw every month!"
"We'll recruit them later," the brute snapped. "You on the bed by the door! Why aren't you in the fields?"
"Sick," Bilar groaned.
The brute backed away, making the sign against evil. "What sickness is it, woman?" he demanded. "Only bread that molded too much, sair," Bilar's wife whined. "I hope."
"Well, keep an eye on him, and if anyone else gets stomach pains, keep everyone inside," the brute ordered. "We don't want pestilence spreading among you cattle. Boot! Check those other three beds while I check these!"
Gar heard a succession of kicks all around the hut. Then the brute said with disgust, "Nothing. They must have hidden in the woods between here and the castle. Off with you, now!" He went out the door, bellowing, "Form up!"
"How old is she?" the boot asked Ralke. "Answer true, or you'll feel a boot's boot!" He chuckled at his own cleverness.
"Twelve," Ralke answered, his accent thicker than normal. "She'm budded early, our Else, though she'm still be but twelve."
"Then I'll be back in three years," the boot promised, and went out the door, calling, "Aye, aye, brute, I'm here."
; Everyone sat, still and taut, while they listened to the brute bellowing his troops into line. Then came the heavy tread of forty feet marching. It faded and was gone.
Ralke heaved a sigh of relief and came to his feet. "Good fortune! I've never been more glad for a boot's stupidity!"
"I'm glad, too." Bilar rolled to his feet.
"I'm fifteen," the girl said indignantly as her weight lifted off Gar. He sat up, scattering straw. "So tha art, ma lass, but if the boot had knowed it, he'd ha' come back and taken 'ee off to the woods, and brought ye back weeping," her mother said, with the air of one who knows by bitter experience. "Keep the face smudged and the locks in a tangle, as I've bade 'ee!"
"Thank 'ee for so quick a lie," Bilar said to Ralke.
"The least ah could do," Ralke said, unconsciously falling back into the villager's accent. "Thank 'ee for the hiding of us!"
"Glad, we're glad. Remember us if tha comest back this way. Dress thee, na, an' be off!"
Ralke changed clothes quickly, leaving his hair for later washing. Then he beckoned to Gar and went out the door-but he turned back to count twelve copper coins into Bilar's hand.
The earthquake hit, and Cort's eyes flew open, his heart thudding wildly with fear. "What's happening?"
The earthquake stopped abruptly, the room stopped shaking, and a strange voice said, with regret, "Sorry to have to wake you, lieutenant. You need your sleep-say, another ten hours' worth."
"Sleep?" Cort sagged back onto the bed. His stomach lurched and tried to climb up his throat. "Let me die! My head feels like an anvil with a smith forging a -sword! Who stuffed their laundry into my mouth?"
"You did, only it wasn't laundry, it was a whole bottle of brandy."
Memory stirred. Cort rolled to the side, squinting against the horrid glare. "I know you from somewhere..."
"We met last night," the stranger said obligingly, "over a couple of civilians your soldiers had decided to use as punching bags."
"I remember." But the effort made Cort's head hurt, and he grabbed it with a groan. "An alley ... a band of citizens . . ." He squinted up at the stranger. "You're ... Poniard? Dagger?"
"Dirk," the stranger said helpfully, "Dulaine. Here, drink this." He held out a tin cup full of dark fluid.
Cort flinched at the smell. "Brandy? It turns my stomach now!"
"Hair of the dog that bit you," Dirk insisted. "Just a shot, lieutenant. Drink it down and you'll feel better-eventually."
Cort eyed Dirk, decided he must be ten years older than Corn himself and had presumably had more experience with toxic fluids. He accepted the tin cup gingerly, took a deep breath, and downed the liquid at one swallow. Then he dropped the cup and exhaled, feeling as though he were breathing. fire.
Dirk caught the cup and set it aside. "It'll help, believe me."
Cort held his head, moaning. "What happened? I remember the alleyway, and..." He stared up at Dirk. "I hired you as a sergeant!"
Dirk nodded. "You were a little drunk by that time. You can change your mind, no hard feelings." But Cort was hot on the track of memory. "You beat the changeling corporal!"
"Well, you know and I know that he's not really a changeling..."
"No, any man who can do that is too valuable to let go," Cort mused. "Why did you let me drink so much?"
"I'm your sergeant, not your conscience! Besides, I could tell you were in a mood to get very drunk on very little, so I figured you needed it, as long as it was safe."
"And you made sure it was safe." Cort stiffened, looking around him, realizing for the first time that he was in a bedchamber. "How did I get here?"
"I carried you," Dirk explained simply.
"And rolled me into this bed?" For the first time, Cort realized he was naked except for his loincloth. "And stripped me?"
"Your uniform needed cleaning, by that time," Dirk explained. "Excuse me-your livery"
"I couldn't keep the liquor down?" Cort blushed furiously.
"The body's little defense against alcohol poisoning, lieutenant."
"Did I..." Cort reddened. "Did I babble?"
"Nothing worth repeating," Dirk said firmly, "and I was the only one who heard you."
But the sympathy in his eyes told Cort that his new sergeant had heard about his broken love in detail. He reddened even more and turned away, but said, "Would you hand me my kerchief, please?"
"I'm just one of your sergeants." Dirk rummaged on the table, then came back to press the kerchief into Cort's hand. "You don't need to say `please' to me."
"I don't usually ask my sergeants to wait on me," Cort said. He slid Violet's ring from his finger, and noticed for the first time that it was really a rather cheap gaud-surely the metal was only brass, for it had made his finger green, and the stone in it was the color of her name; yes, but it had the sheen of glass. Why had he never thought of that before? But he wrapped the ring in his kerchief and turned to hold it out to Dirk. "Would you do me one more favor? Take this to Squire Ellsworth's house, down on that broad side street where the well-to-do people live. Anyone in town can tell you where it is. Tell them . . ." His stomach suddenly bucked, and he stopped to choke it down. "Tell them it's for Violet, and that I wish her well in her future life."
"Sure, lieutenant, no problem. I mean, `Yes, sir.' " Dirk straightened and turned to go.
"Why couldn't you have just let me sleep?" Cort moaned.
"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot!" Dirk turned back. "There's a messenger here, a very young soldier wearing your livery, who says he's from Captain Devers. Want me to let him in?"
"No!" Cort clutched the blanket about him, then remembered himself and pointed at his pack. "There's spare livery in there. Toss it to me, will you?"
"Sure." Dirk opened Cort's pack, pulled out the clean clothing, and set it on the bed. "I'll tell him you'll just be a few minutes. Want him to wait downstairs?"
Cort weighed the likelihood of his making it down the stairway without falling, and decided, "No. Tell him to have his breakfast, if he hasn't already, and to have a flagon of ale if he has, then to come back up and wait upon me here."
"Will do. Hope you feel better soon." Dirk went out, but before the door closed, Cort heard him telling the messenger, "He's a little under the weather, but if you give him a few minutes..."
Then the door closed, and Cort heaved his legs out of bed, then waited for his stomach to settle again. The movement had made his head start pounding worse, too. When both had slackened, he reached out for the livery and began dressing. He knew that the young soldier was indeed a messenger, and suspected what he was going to tell Cort: that they were to report back to headquarters as quickly as possible.
CHAPTER 8
The mules began to pace faster, heads bobbing, and the drivers began to talk to one another with excitement. Then the caravan rounded a curve. The trees opened out into a broad plain cut up into small fields surrounding the walls of a city with a castle dimly seen through the morning mist. The drivers cheered, and Ralke breathed, "Home!" His eyes sparkled, his gaze fastened to his city.
Gar studied the town. Something was different about it, contrasting with Loutre, but he couldn't pin it down. "Who's your boss?"
"Ranatista has no boss, friend," Ralke said. "Legend says that when the troubles started, we were far enough from the seacoast settlements that our ancestors had time to get ready for trouble. Their sage had already taught them to fight with their open hands, for it was a discipline that taught the mind control of the body, and taught the soul to compete without hatred or anger." Gar frowned, though it sounded very familiar. "How do you know that?"
"Because that's why our sages still teach it to us today. But the first squire, Sanahan, called our ancestors to defend themselves. He led them in learning how to use flails and scythes and staves in a kind of fighting that kept the spirit the sages taught, and quarterstaff-play turned very quickly to spear-play. They even had time to build this wall that you see glowing golden in the sunrise. When the bullies came marchi
ng to conquer us, our ancestors poured boiling water on them from the battlements, and wherever they broke through the wall or climbed over it, our ancestors made short work of their boots. One after another, the bullies advanced against us, then retired in consternation, for bullies won't stay chewing at a target that costs them too much in men or weapons."
"Most bullies pick victims they're sure they can beat," Gar said grimly.
"Indeed they do, so all our ancestors needed was to defend themselves well, and the bullies left, since none of them wished to sit down in a siege, easy meat for any other bully who came after them. Thus it is to this day, and all our young men take it in turns to serve in the home guard."
"And Sanahan's successor?"
"We choose a new squire when the old one is fifty, if he lives that long-and most of them do. Then he leads us till his turn comes to retire."
"None of them want to stay squire?"
"Most of them, surely, but they can't deny custom! Oh, they can still live in the castle with their families, and the new squires always value their council-but after fifty, they can't be squire any more, though folk still call them that out of courtesy."
"Squire, retired." Gar nodded. "A good system. Do all the merchants come from such towns as yours?"
Ralke looked sharply at him, then smiled slowly. "You reason quickly, friend. Yes, merchants always come from free towns. Every now and again a young man from a boss's town tries to break into the trade, and we give him what help we can, but the boss always takes all the profit when the youngster returns home, and he has nothing with which to begin another journey."
"Odd that the bosses don't realize they need to encourage the merchants, if they want the wealth they bring in."
"Bosses can see no further than their own comfort, friend Gar."
"Do any of the young men from bosses' towns ever escape to the free towns?"
"It happens now and again," Ralke said, amused. "I was one such."
Gar nodded. "That makes sense. Otherwise, how would you have been a peasant in a boss's domain?" He pointed at the cottages of a small village a few hundred yards from the road and the farmers who were mowing hay nearby. They wore tunics and cross-gartered hose with sandals, and though the garments weren't new, they weren't nearly worn through, either. "Your peasants seem to live a bit better than the ones who hid us."
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