"The other food tally." Gird handed it to the group Fori was with. "Go some distance away from this camp, and then look for anything edible you can find. Birds' eggs, birds in the nest, rabbits, squirrels—most creatures are having young about now; look for their hiding places."
"Frogs?" Triga was not in that group, but he spoke up anyway.
"When you're carrying the food tally, you can catch us frogs, Triga," Gird said.
"And you'll eat them?"
Gird swallowed hard. "I'll do my best. Now—you
are
with the tool tally. You all know we need a lot of things we don't have. Another shovel, axes, chisels. A shepherd's crook would be handy for pulling down vines with edible berries; a drover's stick for beating nuts from the nut trees next fall. We need pots to cook in, bowls to eat from, baskets or sacks to carry what our gatherers find, spoons, buckets, rope: every one of these will help us make more of what we need. Whoever holds the tool tally will work for that day on one of the things we need."
"I can make baskets," Triga said. Everyone stared at him; usually women made baskets. He reddened. "I used to plait the grasses in the bog," he said. "First just for something to do, and then to see what I could make."
"Could you make a basket from anything around here?" asked Gird. He did not want to make another trek to the bog so soon.
Triga stared around, uncertain. "Maybe . . . I can try . . . but it may not work right the first time."
"That's all right. If you find a way, it's time well spent. Any of the rest of you like to whittle?" One man raised his hand. "Good—why don't you start whittling some spoons, and bowls if you find the right chunks of wood. You others try it—anything's better than nothing."
"What about the guard we send out to listen for foresters?" asked Ivis.
"From the last group, those with camp chores tally. Two go out, and three will have plenty to do here. Gathering wood for the fire, tending the fire, and some other things I've thought up. But first—we didn't do any drill yesterday, so let's line up."
This time they lined up quickly and almost evenly. They all started on the same foot, and they marched almost in step from the firepit to the stream, still in lines. Wavery lines, but lines. Gird showed them how to turn in place to the right and left, and then had them march around the camp as a column of twos. They had to weave in and out of trees, and they were soon out of step, but the pairs did manage to stay side by side. By this time Gird was warm and had worked the stiffness out, so he sent the two groups with food tallies off, and picked two guards from the camp chores group. One of the remaining three he sent in search of the driest wood he could find, one sat by the fire, and Gird beckoned to the last.
He had had the idea that they could weave lengths of wattle, as he'd used for the barton gate, and the fence between his smallgarden and his neighbor's. Wattle laid at an angle against a log might give some protection from wet. He explained what he had in mind to Artha, a very tall, loose-jointed man nearly bald on top. Artha had vague, hazy blue eyes, and the least initiative Gird had seen.
"But I don't—that wattle, now, we all's made it wi' the sticks i' the ground, like. Put the sticks down in the wet mud, my granda he said, and then put the vines through, back and forth, back and forth—"
"But the sticks don't
have
to be in the ground," Gird said. The times he'd mended his gate, without ever taking it down, he knew that. Artha stood slack-handed, his jaw hanging. Gird realized that this was going to take firmness, as if Artha had been a child. "Artha, bring me some sticks, about so long—" He spread his arms to show the length.
"All right, but I dunno how you'll do it lessen you put them sticks in the mud first—"
"Never mind, just bring me the sticks." Artha ambled off, and Gird searched up and down the streambank until he found a willow sprouting multiply from the muck. He cut the pliant sprouts and stacked them.
By midday, Gird looked around the busy campsite and smiled to himself. The voices he heard all sounded content; one man was even whistling "Nutting in the Woods." His sergeant and his father had both been right: idleness was a fool's delight, and work brought its own happiness. Triga had created one lopsided basket from the same willow sprouts Gird was using, and then torn it down to make it "right" as he said. Now he was halfway through again. It didn't look quite like any basket Gird had seen, but it was going to be a useful size, he could tell. The man who liked to whittle—Kerin, that was—had turned out three recognizable spoons. He'd pointed out that he needed something to rub them with, to finish them, and one of the others had experimented with Gird's collection of cobbles. Gird and Artha had made one length of wattle, not quite an armspan wide by twice that in length. Gird held it up to the light: it would no more keep water out than a basket, he thought. But it would support something
else
. Leaves? A deerhide?
Late afternoon brought the food gatherers back. First came the hunting and gathering group, with a miscellany of edibles. Birds' eggs from different kinds of nests: small, round and beige, pointy and blue with speckles, streaked with brown on beige. They'd found a rabbit's burrow, and while the blind, squirming kits had been very small, there were eight of them. Fori had knocked another squirrel out of a tree, and they'd found a squirrel nest—but that led to near disaster, when Fori, precariously wrapped around the slender bole, had met a furious mother squirrel face to face. Fori had come down faster than he went up, losing skin off his arms. "But I have a nose, still," he said. They had also, on the advice of one of the others, dug up the roots of the thick-leaved grasslike plants that grew along the stream lower down. One man had the bight of his shirt full of last fall's nuts: some were rotting or sprouting, but some were still whole and sweet.
Ivis's group had come back with little food, but other important treasures. "Gars says he never used his granda's old stone tools—even his granda didn't—but look—" and he emptied a well-worn, greasy leather sack. Gird looked at the odd-shaped bits of stone curiously. He could remember seeing clutter like that in someone's cottage . . . and old Hokka had used a sickle set with tiny stone blades. But he'd never used stone tools himself. "They're sharp," Ivis said, as if he'd asked. "Gars thinks some of them had handles—wooden handles—but I don't know how they'd fasten. But you can cut with them." Some were obviously blades, thin shards of stone like broken pottery. Others were rough lumps with a sharp edge, like handax heads, or chisels. Kerin poked at them.
"I could use these . . . it would be easier to make a bowl with this than a knife . . ." Gird nodded; that got him off the hook.
"Fine—try them, and if you can teach someone else—" He turned to thank Ivis, but Ivis was still grinning.
"That's not all. Look here—" Wrapped in a wet cloth, he had brought seedlings of the common greenleaves: cabbage, lettuce. . . . The villagers had liked the idea of the outlaws growing some of their own food, and he'd been given as much as he could carry without crushing it. One of the men carried a small round cheese, and another had a large lump of tallow. He had also thought to ask for things Gird hadn't mentioned: beeswax, soap, thread. "Best of all—" Ivis nodded at the last member of his team, who pulled a bundle from under his shirt. It was cloth, something rolled into a lump—but the deepest, most intense blue Gird had ever seen.
"What is
that
?" he asked.
Ivis grinned. "You know the lords won't let us have blue clothes—"
"Yes. I never saw any."
"This is old, from my granda's time. He used to say that the blue was expensive—it came from some kind of blue stone, from far away north—but before the lords came it was a favorite color. Good luck color. Anyway, my brother says if you're serious about overturning the lords, best we'd have some blue shirts."
Gird unfolded the bundle carefully. Two blue shirts, each decorated with intricate embroidery around the neck, flowers and grain in brilliant colors. The old woolen cloth was as sound as ever. "Where had they kept this? Not even a moth hole . . ."
"I don't know. My brother's the eldest; he knew about it and I didn't. But I do remember my granda's stories. What do you think?"
"I think it's good luck," said Gird, refolding the shirts carefully.
On a bright, blustery day in early summer, Gird led his troop eastward through the wood. There were twenty-four of them now, and every one of them carried his own spoon and bowl as well as his own belt knife. Each had a hat, plaited of grass and oiled against rain, and a staff about his own height. Each had three flat hard loaves of bread tucked into his shirt. And they marched quietly through the wood, with Diamod scouting ahead, and Triga bringing up the rear.
They were on their way to meet another of the Stone Circle groups two days away; Diamod (as usual) made contact. Behind them, the forester's campsite was clean and bare; they had moved all their gear some days back to another site Gird had found. Gird found himself about to whistle, and didn't. They were all doing well, including the new ones. He'd been surprised when three more came from his old village; a friend of Fori's, Teris's son Orta, and Siga, a single man about ten years Gird's junior.
They had told him all the latest news: how the steward had come to Gird's cottage only to find it stripped to the bare walls. He had taken that for Gird's impudence, but the villagers had done it, hiding every pot, tool, and bit of cloth. Gird had felt tears burning his eyes when the boys showed what they brought—his people, his neighbors, had cared that much, to risk themselves to save his things, and then to send their sons with it. Irreplaceable treasure indeed: two hammers, three chisels, his awl and his axe, a shovel blade, a spokeshave, a plane, a kettle, a longhandled metal spoon, firetongs, the cowhides that had been stretched across the bed-frames, a furl of cloth that still showed rusty bloodstains . . . "We couldn't carry it all," Orta had explained. "But if you go back, or send someone, there's more."
His eyes still burned, thinking of it. He blinked the tears away, and told himself to keep his mind on the journey.
Part of that involved watching out for forage along the way. They had all learned, since he came, to make use of whatever food came along. Gird had even eaten one of Triga's frogs; he was sure it wriggled in his throat, but he had to admit it tasted like food. More or less. Some of the others refused, but most followed his lead. He still didn't like frogs for dinner, but better that than hunger. Now he scanned the undergrowth on either side for edible berries and fruits, herbs and mushrooms. Fori, still the best slinger in the troop, would be watching the trees for squirrels or levets.
Gird wished it had been possible to leave Pidi with someone. The boy was too young for this, he told himself again—but then again, the boy was not as young as he might be. The black eye had faded, leaving only a faint dark stain beneath, but the little child he had been, thoughtless and carefree, had not come back. Pidi seemed happy enough—he laughed sometimes, and scampered through the woods like a young goat—but he would never be carefree. It would have happened in time, Gird knew, but—he shook that thought away. There was no safe place for Pidi. Home had not been safe. That led him to Rahi, and the black sorrow pierced him again. She had lost the child, in fever, and when he'd last heard, a few days ago, she was still too weak to get up.
A gust of wind roared by overhead, whipping the forest canopy and letting a flash of sunlight through.
The Windsteed in spring seeks the far-ranging Mare . . .
he thought, clicking his tongue in the rhythm of the chant. This was late for the Windsteed's forays, but what else could it be? He accepted the omen, and let the wind blow away his dark thoughts. It never paid to argue with the gods, any of them.
That night he insisted that their temporary campsite be set up as neatly as the old one. No one argued. Fori lopped a sapling to make a handle for the shovel blade, tied it snugly, and began digging the jacks trench. They would have no fire, but they ate their beans (cooked the night before) from bowls, with spoons. Even plain beans tasted better that way, not scooped up with fingers. Almost before he said anything, the correct tally group had gathered up bowls and spoons to wash them in the creek by the camp; when they were done, everyone stripped down and bathed.
The full measure of what he had accomplished became obvious when they met the other Stone Circle group the next afternoon. They had come out of the wood, and angled between some brush-covered hills, and down a crooked stream bed. The other group had a guard out to meet them—that much Gird could approve—but they could smell the camp long before it came in sight. He noticed that his men wrinkled their noses as well. He had not intended to bring them in as a formal drill, but they began to fall in step, rearranging themselves into a column.
They came into a space set off by a rocky bluff on one side, and house-high thickets of pickoak on the others, to find unkempt men lounging around a smoking fire. Someone had stretched a line between two trees, from which flapped something intended as laundry, but Gird could not recognize one whole garment. His own troop fairly strutted into the clearing, and came to a smart halt without the command he forgot to give. The others stared at them, wide-eyed as cattle staring over a gate. The one who seemed to be the leader, a redhaired man whose sunburnt nose was peeling, stared as hard as any. Then he got up from his log.
"I don't believe it. Diamod, you said these were farmers?"
Diamod smirked. "I said these were farmers who had learned soldiering. Was I right?"
"You—and
you
must be Gird." The man came forward, looking Gird over with interest.
"I'm Gird, yes."
"And you were a soldier?"
"Years ago I was a recruit. Then a farmer. Now—what you see."
The man looked along the column, and swallowed. "What I see is hard to believe. How long have you been training them?"