Gird stared at him, uncertain. So many strangers—not one familiar face beyond Fori and Pidi—upset him. He could not read their expressions; he did not know where they were from, or how they would act.
"Have you ever been out of your vill before?" asked the man, less brusquely.
"Only to trade fair, one time, and to Fireoak when I was courting," Gird said. The man's voice even sounded strange; some of his words had an odd twang to them.
"Then you feel like a lost sheep, in among wild ones. I know that feeling. Fireoak's in your hearthing, anyway—hardly leaving home and kin, like this. Diamod has told us about you—that you sent grain, the past few years, after your friend was killed—"
"Amis," said Gird. It seemed important to name him.
"And now you've run away to join us. Why?"
Gird got the tale out in short, choked phrases; no one interrupted. When he finished, he was breathing hard and fast, and the others were looking mostly at their feet. Only the blackhaired man met his eyes.
"Outlaw—this is what you chose. After telling Diamod you would not consider it—"
"While I could farm," Gird said. "Now—"
"You can't farm here," the man gestured at the surrounding forest. "So what skills do you bring us?"
Gird was sweating, wishing he could plunge away into the trees and lose himself. What did these men want? Were they going to grant him shelter or not? "I thought I would do what Diamod asked before: teach you what I know of soldiering."
Someone snickered, behind him. The blackhaired man smiled. "And what do you know of soldiering, after a lifetime spent farming? Did you bring swords, and will you teach us to use them? Or perhaps that scythe slung on your back will turn to a pike at your spellword? Diamod told me he had found someone, a renegade guardsman, he said, to teach us soldiers' drill, but what good is drill without weapons?"
The tone of the questions roused his anger, and banished fear. "Without drill you couldn't use weapons if you had them. With it—with it, you can use whatever comes to hand, and make a weapon of it."
"S'pose you'll lead us into battle wi' sticks, eh?" asked one man. Others chuckled. "Fat lot of good that will do, a stick against a sword."
"It can," said Gird, "if you've the sense to use it like a stick, and not try to fence with it." This time the chuckles were fewer; he could see curiosity as well as scorn in their faces.
" 'Course," said the black-haired man, "we've only got your word for it, that you can fight at all."
"That's true." Gird relaxed; he knew what would come of this. They wanted to see what Diamod had dragged in, but it would be a fair fight. "You want to see me fight?"
"I think so." The blackhaired man looked around at the others. "Aye—that's what we want. Show us something."
"Let'm eat first, Ivis," said one of the other men. "They been travelin' all day."
"No guest-right," the blackhaired man scowled. "Until this Gird proves what he is or isn't, I'm not granting guest-right."
"No guest-right," said Gird. He was surprised to find outlaws following that much of the social code. Food was more of the soaked grain, and a cold mush of boiled beans. Looking around, Gird saw only the one firepit, and no oven. The blackhaired man unbent enough to explain.
"Sometimes the lords hunt this wood, and their foresters use this clearing. So a fire here is safer than one elsewhere in the wood; folks is used to seeing smoke from about here. We tried to build an oven once, but they broke it up when they found it."
"Where do you go when the foresters come?" asked Gird.
"That you'll find out after you fight.
If
you convince us to let you stay."
When Gird had eaten a little, he stood and stretched. The others went on eating, all but a strongly built man a little shorter than he was. Gird glanced at the black-haired man, who grinned.
"You'll fight Cob; he's our best wrestler. Used to win spicebread at the trade fair that way, as a lad. Show us how a soldier fights, but no killing: if you're good, we can't afford to lose you or Cob."
"All right." Gird had seen Cob's sort of wrestler before; he would be strong and quick. But the sergeant had taught his recruits many ways to fight hand-to-hand, and which ones were best against which kind of opponent. Gird watched Cob crouch and come forward in a balanced glide, and grinned to himself.
Although he knew what to do, it had been a long time since he'd done it. He got the right grip on Cob's arm, and put out his own leg, but his timing was just off, and Cob twisted away before he was thrown. Gird avoided Cob's attempt at a hold, but the effort threw him off balance and he staggered. Cob launched himself at Gird, knocking him sideways, and threw a leg across him quickly. Gird remembered that—it took a roll, here, and a quick heave
there
, and suddenly he was on top of Cob. Under him, the man's muscles were bunched and hard. He was not quitting. Gird did not wait for Cob's explosion, but rolled backwards suddenly, releasing his grip. Cob bounced up and charged. This time Gird was ready; he took the wrist of the arm Cob punched at him, pivoted, and flung Cob hard over his shoulder onto the ground.
Cob lay blinking, half-stunned. Gird heard something behind him, and whirled in time to catch another charge, even as the blackhaired man said "Triga—no!" Triga's mad rush required no great skill; Gird used the man's own momentum to send him flying as well. He landed hard and skidded an armlength when he landed.
Cob whistled, from his place on the ground. "You could've made money with that throw, Gird. Teach me?"
Gird looked at the blackhaired man. "Well?"
"Well. You can fight—not many overthrow Cob. I'm sorry about Triga, but glad to see you have no trouble with him. We can use those skills."
"And the rest?"
The blackhaired man frowned slightly. "I am not the only leader, the Stone Circle is made of many circles, and each has its own. You must convince us all that this is something we need, and can use. I still do not see how sticks and shovels will let us stand against soldiers with sharp steel."
Gird started to say that he wasn't sure, but realized that these men didn't want to hear that. Those eyes fastened on his face wanted certainty, confidence, the right answer. The only answer he was sure of was drill. "You have to start with drill," he said. He knew they could hear the certainty in his voice about that. "You have to learn to work together, move together. Let me show you."
"Now?" someone asked, as if it were absurd to start something new so late in the day.
"You can't start sooner," said Gird, quoting the old proverb. Several of the men chuckled, but it was a friendly chuckle this time.
"Start with me," said the blackhaired man. "My name's Ivis." He stood and the rest stood also. Cob, cheerful despite his fall, had climbed to his feet, and reached a hand down to Triga.
Gird took a deep breath and tried to remember the expression on his sergeant's face. "The first thing is, you line up here." He scratched a line in the dirt with his toe. "You, too, Fori—come on. Pidi, just stay out of the way. Two hands of you here, and two behind, an armslength." That would make two ranks of ten.
When the front ten had their toes more or less arranged on the line he'd scratched, he looked at them again. They slouched in an uneven line, shoulders hunched or tipped sideways, heads poked forward, knees askew. Triga was rubbing his elbow. Those behind were even more uneven; they had taken his armslength literally, and the short ones stood closer to those in front than the tall ones. This was going to be harder than he'd thought. His boyhood friends had been eager to play soldier.
"Stand up straight," he said. "Like the soldiers you've seen. Heads up—" That sent one of them staggering, as he jerked his head up too far. Someone else chuckled. Ivis growled at them, and they settled again. Gird did not like their expressions: they weren't taking this seriously at all. Only Fori and Cob and Ivis looked as if they were even trying. "You three—" he said, pointing to them. "You get together here in the middle. And you others—look at them, how they're standing. Like that is what you need. Feet together, toes out a little. Hands at your sides. You in the back row, make a straight row—" Gradually they shifted and wiggled into something more like military posture. Gird wondered if he had looked like that at first. Maybe this was the best they could do, for now.
"Now you have to learn to march." He glared, daring anyone to laugh. No one did, but he saw smirks. His old sergeant would have had something to say about that, but he had never dealt with outlaws, either. "You all have to start with the same foot—"
"Like dancing?" asked Cob. Gird stopped, surprised. He'd never thought of it as like dancing, but all the dances required the men to step out with the same foot, or they'd have been tripping each other. He thought his way into the harvest dance he had led so many times. Wrong foot.
"Like dancing," he said finally, "but not the same foot. The other foot, from the harvest dance." Surely they all danced it the same way. "Think of the dance, and then pick up the other foot." Slowly, wavering, one foot after another came up, until they were all teetering on one foot. All but two had the correct foot. Those looked down, saw they were wrong, and changed feet. "Now one step forward." The double line lurched towards him, out of step and no two steps the same length. Gird felt a twinge of sympathy for his old sergeant. Had it been this difficult? "Straighten out the lines," he said.
He kept them at it until his voice was tired. By then they could break apart and reassemble in two fairly straight lines, and they could all pick up the same foot at the same time. But when they walked forward, their uneven strides quickly destroyed the lines. He was sure they could have danced it, arms over each others' shoulders, but they couldn't fight in that position. He'd told them that, and a few other things, and remembered some of the words his sergeant had used.
They were ready to lounge around, eating their meager supper, but Gird remembered more than his sergeant's curses.
"We must learn to keep things clean," he said.
"Clean!" Triga had scowled often; now he sneered. "We're not lords in a palace. How can we be clean—and why should we?"
"Soldiers keep themselves clean, and their weapons bright. I spent my first days in the guard scrubbing the floor, washing dishes, and scouring buckets. First, it keeps men healthy—you all know that—and protects against fevers. And second, it means that you know your equipment will work. A weapon's no good if the blade is dull. And third, I stink bad enough to tell any forester there's a poor man here: so do you all, after the drill. D'you want hounds seeking us? It's warm enough: we should all bathe."
Sighing, Ivis and Cob heaved themselves up, and the others followed. Gird led them to the waterfall. Once well wet, the men cheered up and began joking, splashing each other. Pidi had found a clump of soaproot, and sliced off sections with his knife. Soon the creek was splattered with heavy lather.
When Gird felt that the grime and sweat of the past days was finally gone, he washed his clothes as best he could, and saw the bloodstains from Parin and Rahi fade to brownish yellow. The other men watched him, curious, but some of them fetched their own ragged garments and tumbled them in the water. Gird smiled when he saw them laying out the wet clothes on bushes, as he was doing. Diamod brought him a clump of leaves.
"Here—rub this on, and the flies will stay away. Otherwise you'll be eaten up by the time your things are dry."
"I should've washed clothes first—now it's near nightfall. But I have a spare shirt."
"Most of them don't."
But even in dirty clothes, the men stank less, and carried themselves less furtively. Gird, with a clean shirt tickling his bare knees, suggested another change in their customs.
"Why not bake a hearthcake on one of these stones? Twouldn't be bread, exactly, but it would be hot, and cooked—"
"If we had honey we could have honeycakes, an' we had grain," said Triga. Gird began to take a real dislike to Triga.
"There's always bees in a wood," he said crisply. "And stings to a bee, for all that."
"There's none knows how to make the batter, Gird," said Ivis. "We've no mill or flour. All we know is crush the grain and soak it—if you know better, teach us that."
Gird thought of the millstones left behind—but he could not have carried them and Rahi. He looked at the stones used as seats, and found one with a slightly hollowed surface. Then he went to the creekside, and looked for cobbles. He could feel the other men watching him, as if he were a strange animal, a marvel. But millstones, the cottage millstones, were no different. A hollowed stone, like a bowl, and the grinder. Some people had flatter ones, with a broader grinder. It had to be fine-grained stone, and hard. He picked up several cobbles he liked, and hefted them, felt along their smooth curves with a careful finger. Yes.
Ivis had the grainsack out for him when he returned. Gird wondered if it was grain he'd grown, or someone else's contribution. It didn't matter. He dipped a small handful, and poured it onto the stone, then rubbed with the cobble. It wasn't the right shape—neither the bottom stone nor the grinder—and the half-ground grain wanted to spit out from under and fall off. He worked steadily, ignoring the others, pushing the meal back under the grinder with his finger. He was careful not to lick it, as he would have at home: thin as they all were, they must be keeping famine law, when all the food was shared equally.
When the first handful was ground to a medium meal, he brushed it into a wooden bowl that Ivis had brought. It was not enough to make any sort of bread for all of them, but he could test his memory. Cob brought him a small lump of tallow, and he took a pinch of salt from the saltbag he'd brought himself. Meal, water, fat, salt—not all he liked in his hearthcakes, but better than meal and water alone. He stirred it in the wooden bowl, while the fire crackled and Pidi brushed off the flattest of the stones facing the firepit. The tallow stayed in its lump, stubborn, and Gird remembered that he needed to heat it. He skewered it on a green stick, and held it over the fire, catching the drips in the bowl. Finally it melted off, and he stirred it in quickly. He felt the stone, and remembered that he should have greased it. The stick he'd used for the tallow was greasy now; he rubbed his fingers down it, and then smeared the stone. The stone was hot, but was it hot enough? He poured the batter out. It stiffened almost at once, the edges puckering. Hot enough. With his arm, he waved heat toward it, to cook the upper surface. Mali had had the skill to scoop up the hearthcakes and flip them, but the only times he'd tried it, they'd fallen in the fire.