In the dimness, the old man's face was suddenly more visible, as if a candle had been lit inside it. "Lad, I can stay here, or go, or stay with you, and they will not find me—have you seen nothing this evening?"
"Riddles," said Gird. "You give me tricks and riddles—"
"I give you light in darkness." The old man's face shone brighter, then dimmed. "But the blind cannot see light, and think darkness is reality."
Gird stirred on the cold step, not sure what he could say. The old man was mad, and no wonder, with what he'd been through. He must have been one of
them
—perhaps one of their elder mages—and he'd angered someone. They'd taken their revenge, and wrecked his mind as well as his body. Probably as bad as the rest of them, when he was whole, but now—"I need to go now," he said, as gently as he could. "I'll come back you."
"Yes," said the old man. "You will." He bit off a chunk of the barley cake, and started chewing it. Gird watched a moment, feeling a strange confusion in his mind, then shook his head and got up.
The meeting place, when he finally found it, was a merchant's storeroom crowded with nervous men, at least a dozen of them, and lit by two candles. He'd expected only the elders of the barton, but apparently others had insisted on coming. Was this a trap? He tried to see the corners of the storeroom as he gave the password again, but darkness lurked behind bales and boxes as if it were alive and twitching. His neck itched; he wanted to whirl and look behind himself, but he controlled that urge.
Calis, the only man he'd met before, limped forward to shake his arm and then grinned broadly at the rest. "I told you he'd come. Whatever happens, he'd come."
"He's late." That was a square-built, black-bearded man, with a look of authority and the weathered face of someone out in the open most of his life.
"He's here. That's what counts." Calis shook his arm again. "Lady bless you, Gird, for coming. You'll lead us, eh? Make us free?"
Calis had not sounded that simple back in Harrow, when he visited that barton's drill. Then he had seemed a possible leader, someone who could organize a barton, start its training. Gird looked around as calmly as he might, trying to figure out what had gone wrong here. Fifteen men, no women—that was still common enough, despite his urging. None very young: quite right, at such a secret meeting; young men talked too much. None very old. Four held themselves with a kind of furious rigidity: men used to command, perhaps, pretending a passivity they could not feel? Gird smiled at the black-bearded man. "Hurry makes the fleet fall, and the aim wide: I came as I might, to come safely."
"You would preach safety in war?" That was another of the four he'd noted, a tall brown bear of a man leaning against the stacked boxes across from him.
"I preach nothing, being no priest. As Calis will have told you, I expect—" He glanced at Calis, whose gaze slid past him. So. Trouble indeed. "I teach what seems obvious to me, that wild rebellion against the king but causes death and torment."
"And this is what we came for?" The brown man pushed away from the boxes to confront him. "We came to hear the same song the priests sing: obey, submit, seek peace from the Lady in your hour of death?"
"Gird,
tell
them. Tell them what you told us at Harrow."
The worst trouble: treachery. Their first rule was never to mention one barton in another, to say only "there" or "that other place" or "his barton." Gird shook Calis's hand from his arm, but without violence, and tried to decide where the worst danger lay. He could not fight fifteen, were they all of the same mind, but it was just as likely that Calis had tried to entrap honest rebels as well as one rebel leader. If he could but find them out, and lead them. A dense silence packed the room thicker than the men. Someone behind the black-bearded man coughed. Was it a signal?
Gird glanced around the group, meeting all eyes but Calis's. In the candlelight, all glittered; he could not tell false from true. He lifted his hand for silence, though all were quiet, and began.
"You know the times are bad. You know they're getting worse. Bad enough when peasants are murdered at their work, when wives and mothers are raped and beaten, left for dead with their babies crawling in their blood. Worse, when the craftsman's skill is bought with pain and threats, when a smith must make shackles and chains for prisoners, not plows and harrows for farming. Bad enough when merchants' goods are stolen for the rich, and they must cheat the poor to survive." He looked from face to face. There was one closed, tight with anger—for old wrongs, or for his words? Another sat slack-jawed, as if he could drink Gird's words in, taste them on his tongue. There in the dim shadows at the back, two heads leaned together, mouth to ear.
"You know there's been fighting—everyone knows that. Men and women have died, for trying to save their own lives. You know that all the times farmers and craftsmen and merchants have tried to fight against trained soldiers, they've been killed, and their families with them. What I'm telling you is about another way."
"A way for peasants to fight soldiers?" asked the black-bearded man.
"A way for peasants to
be
soldiers." Gird paused. That was the nub of it, and enough to have him hanged. He sensed a stirring back in the shadows. Well, he need not mince words now, having already convicted himself, and maybe boldness would gather a few to his side. "The difference between soldiers and hopeless fools willing to die is training. Not fine swords, nor magic, but training—the training soldiers have."
"And you can give us that training?"
That
voice came from wealth and privilege, with its arrogant sonorities. Gird smiled straight at it.
"I? I'm a farmer: I
give
nothing. But I know how you can
earn
that training, and that's my reason here." Out of the gloom sea-green eyes stared into his. He could just make out a foxy brush of hair, a slender figure no longer lounging in the shadows but upright, alert. Odds it was some noble's son, come to spit rebels with his guards around him to keep him safe.
"Gods know, farmers give nothing." That voice again, this time clearly belonging to green eyes and an arrogant set of head and shoulders. "That sounds like kapristi talking, if a farmer knows what kapristi are." He didn't, but he caught the muttered "Gnomes!" of another.
"Farmers earn their bread," Gird said, working his toes in his boots to ready himself. It had to come soon. "As craftsmen do, and merchants too, most times. What's earned feeds; what's given rots the belly. What's taken—" He stopped as light dazzled his eyes, light that polished the blades drawn against him. He saw no source, but it centered on the brown man.
"What's taken belongs to the taker," said he, amusement ruffling the edge of his voice. "Traitors taken, in this town, belong to me." He stood easily, weaponless, but from behind the stacked boxes had come two guards, with pikes, and four of the other men had drawn swords. To Gird's surprise, the green-eyed man wasn't one of them: his face drew back, shocked into loss of its earlier dignity. Calis stood dithering, clearly wondering whether to seize Gird or retreat to the safety of shadows.
"What's taken," Gird said, meeting the brown man's eyes, "chokes the taker." His fingers clenched and loosened, and he realized then that he'd left his stout staff with the old man on the beggars' steps.
Idiot
he told himself.
You're asking the gods for a miracle.
The brown man gave a smile that might have been genuine admiration.
"You're brave, at least—no whining craven like most of your type. Too bad you didn't choose honest soldiery, fellow—"
"I tried," said Gird, keeping his voice level with an effort. He was not sure why he bothered to answer, save that he had no plan, and saw little help in the faces of others. "As a lad, I joined my count's guard right willingly. But then—"
"What?" asked the brown man, lifting a hand to halt the guards who had moved a step nearer. Gird looked at him, seeing nothing like the vindictive arrogance of his own count. Those eyes might have been honest; that mouth had laughed honestly, at things worth amusement, not at others' pain. Well, it would serve nothing, but he would tell this man the truth, and if one of them lived after his night, that one would know it had been told.
"The lord of our village came from the king's court with his friends, to celebrate his coming of age. One of the village lads chose that confusion to steal plums from the lord's orchard—" Gird paused, and the man nodded for him to go on. Despite himself, his voice trembled over the next phrases, and he forced more breath into it, almost growling at the end. "So our lord had him taken, which was just enough, and had him tormented and finally maimed, which was not just, not for a few plums. And he enjoyed the sight, gloating over the boy's pain, and I—" He stopped again, drew in a great breath. "I was hardly older; I'd known Meris all my life." His accent thickened, he could tell the brown man had trouble following it now. "I knew—I knew someday they'd tell me the same, to hurt or kill some poor lad as only wanted a handful of plums or a truss of grapes. Kill m'own folk, maybe, if in a bad year th'cows wandered. I could'na do that—could not—and so I ran, and it fell hard on my own folk even when I came back."
"You're from Kelaive's domain," the brown man said, softly. "That insolent pup, worst of a bad litter. I'd heard that tale differently."
"Certain so, if
he
told it," said Gird, caught up as always in that old pain, but also, suddenly curious to know how Kelaive told it.
"Not from him: his sergeant told one of my guards, and it passed to me on one long march—a good soldier ruined, he said, by a bad lord's whim, and the blame fell on him, too, for not knowing how to keep you." The man shook his head. "Well. You know the law, that's clear, and your place in it. You had a bad master; that's no excuse—"
"And what would be?" asked Gird, his voice tight with unshed tears and old anger still caged. "Would my mother's death, when that count refused the simples of the wood to us? Would our hunger, in a bad winter when Kelaive danced in the king's hall and laid double taxes on, to buy himself more gowns? Would my daughter's pain, her own babe by her lover dead, and her raped to bear a stranger's child? Cows stolen to make his feasts, sheep taken to give him wool—by all the gods, we farmers may not give, but we take better care of our least creatures than you lords do of us. Prod an ox and it kicks, and even a beaten cur will turn and bite your heel—"
"Peace, fellow!" The brown man stared at him. "Esea's dawn, but you've a long tongue in your head, and wit in that thick skull. A hard use dulls most tools, but those of high temper—" He stopped, gestured, and the four drawn swords rasped back into their sheaths, though the guards stayed as they were, poised just behind him. "See here: would you take service with me, you and your family safe from Kelaive, and quit this nonsense? You'll be killed, elsewise, and your family take the brunt of Kelaive's bad will: by law I must report those rebels I seize."
He might have done it, had not Calis seized his hand and rushed into speech. "Yes, Gird, yes! He's a good lord, he is, and fair and just—he'll keep his word to you—" But under the rush of words was fear, and in the other eyes he saw the same fear trembling. He shook off Calis's hand, and met the brown man's eyes.
"You will protect me, you say." The brown man nodded, gravely. "But what of these others? You may be trying to be a good lord, sir—" The sir came out slowly, but inexorably, "—but here are those who thought you bad enough to join a plot against you." He waved his hand around at those who clearly wished they could be invisible. "You may be better than Kelaive—I dare say you are, and it should be easy enough. But you can't protect all those that need it, and it looks like you haven't protected all your own, even."
The brown man looked around; Gird watched the men flinch as he looked at each one slowly. "Cobbler. Wheelwright. Cloth merchant. Baker's helper. You think to make a government out of such as these, farmer? Who'll make your laws? Who'll judge in your courts?"
"Honest men, sir." He didn't want to say "sir," to someone who would either kill him, or be killed, this night, but he found himself doing it anyway. And he could not hate this man, who was so much more reasonable than Kelaive.
"Honest
merchants
?" Scorn edged the brown main's voice. Gird noticed one of the men stiffen: that had gone home. "You think to find honest judges from a tangle of merchants who pour water in the milk, or chalk in flour they sell you. Or among farmers who put the bruised fruit in the basket first, or craftsmen who put as much base metal in gold or silver as they can?"
"As near there as among nobles, sir," Gird said, and braced himself for the blow that would surely come. The brown man glared at him, showing anger for the first time. "At least among common men, of different trades, there's a chance they'd stick to a measure, not make different weights and measures for each case."
"Damn!" The brown man clenched his fist then opened it. "You
are
a man, after all. I hate—it's too bad you cannot bring yourself to take service here." He glanced aside, at the black-bearded man who had been one of the swordsmen. "Remember what I said, Caer? Squeeze the mud, and it turns to stone; beat the ore and get gold: from the pressure we put on them, such comes out. I would be proud if son of mine had courage to speak so before a deadly peril, had wit to think in bondage." He turned back to Gird. "Death it must be, but a man like you does not fear death. I swear no torment; come quietly and I'll ensure the headsman's single blow. If you must fight, then I cannot interfere, and not all wounds kill cleanly."
For some reason he could not define, Gird felt a change in the room's atmosphere, as if a shutter had opened, letting in fresher air and truer light. He smiled at the brown man. "Sir, it's not my way to give in so easily. But I will admit that had my lord been like you, I might not be here."
"Were my subjects like you, Gird, I might not be here either." He looked around again. "Out of these weaklings, these trimmers, you'd make an army? Were you to have the chance to try, I'd wish you luck of it, but worry none."