"We will see you at Blackbone Hill," said Armsmaster Setik, who had come out with Gird. Arranha was staying behind awhile, but had told Gird he would follow him later. Gird wondered if Arranha knew about Blackbone Hill; the gnomes mentioned the name only when Arranha was not around.
"Yes," said Gird, drinking in another breath of that air, wondering why the ragged, uneven landscape of duns and grays seemed so much more beautiful than the careful sculpting of the gnomes' halls.
"You have the maps."
"Yes." As he looked at the land, now, the maps he had been taught to use seemed to overlay it. He would go
that
way, and find a tiny watercourse to lead him north and west, then leave that one by a steep-browed hill, and find another beyond the hill, and then the wood he almost thought of as
his
wood . . .
"And—" Setik looked up at him with an expression Gird could not interpret. "I found it most satisfying; for a human, you are—are not unlike a kapristi in some ways."
Gird turned, surprised. The Armsmaster had been even less outgoing than his other instructors, if possible. Gird had assumed he would be glad to rid himself of a clumsy human oaf. Setik's brow was furrowed slightly, his scars pulled awry.
"You are by nature hasty, as all the lateborn are: hasty to laughter, to anger, to hunger—but you forced foresight on yourself, and withheld haste. You have a gift for order, for discipline, for what we mean by responsibility."
"You are a good teacher," Gird said.
The gnome nodded. "I am, that is true. But the best teacher cannot turn a living thing from its nature: I could not make stone grow and bear fruit like a tree. I could not teach a tree to fly. Even among us, who are much alike, some have less talent for war than others. You have it, and you have what is rare with us—what war requires that the rest of our life does not need, and that is a willingness to go beyond what is required, into the realm of gift."
Gird was both puzzled and fascinated. All he had heard, from Lawmaster Karik, showed the gnomes' distrust of gifts, and until now he had not suspected the gnomish soldiers thought differently. Setik smiled suddenly, a change as startling as if rock split in a manic grin.
"War calls for more than fair exchange; we soldiers know what the lawgivers cannot understand. Even among us, I say, are some who freely give—and in war that giving wins battles. You have that; from what you say, it is a human trait." Abruptly, he stopped, and his face changed back to its former dourness. "Go with the High Lord's judgment," he said. Gird glanced back at the entrance to the gnomes' caves, so nearly invisible; there stood several others, watching and listening.
"You will not take thanks," he said to Setik, "but among my people it is rude to withhold them. I will thank the gods, then, for sending me to such a good teacher of war, and ask their grace to keep my mind from scrambling together what you so carefully set apart."
If he had believed the gnomes had any humor whatever, he would have said Setik's black eyes twinkled. "Soldiers of one training are as brothers of one father," the gnome murmured. "Go now, before someone asks awkward questions."
Gird nodded, saying nothing past the lump in his throat, and headed downslope. He stepped carefully across the boundary, and did not look back until he had traveled well out of sight of that unambiguous line.
The gnomes had shown him a small, exquisitely carved model of the lands they called
gnishina
, all drained by the great river Gird had never yet seen, from the western plains to the sea. All his life Gird had lived among low hills and creeks whose windings made no sense to him. He had thought the world was made lumpy, like redroots in a pan, until he saw the gnomes' country, with great mountains rising behind a line of hills.
The model made sense of what had seemed random hummocks. He had not understood the gnomes' explanation, but the great concentric arcs of rock were obvious enough, with the river dividing them like the cleft of a cow's hoof. Rows of hills, variously shaped by the different kinds of rock in them (he understood that much; everyone knew that red rock made rounded slopes, and white rock made stepwise ones) bowed sharply away from the river, to run almost parallel to the southern mountains as they neared them. Between the hills ran the creeks and rivers, all tributaries of the Honnorgat. These stream valleys had formed natural routes of travel. Moving a large force north or south was easiest near the Honnorgat; moving it east or west was easiest away from the great river.
Once more under the open sky, he could interpret the hills before him for what they were: the flanks of a great arch. Going north, he would cross white rock to yellow, and yellow to brown, then travel west to come back to yellow and white. Just so a man might run his finger from the side of a cow's hoof to the cleft, then forward to the point—and find hoof wall again. More importantly, with his understanding of the whole region, and the maps the gnomes had provided, he would know where he was—where his army was—and how to get where he wanted to go. He hoped.
Human lands were scarcely less perilous than the gnome princedoms, though their perils were less uncanny. Gadilon might not trouble his gnomish neighbors, for fear of their retribution, but he had no intention of letting a peasant uprising unseat him. Gird was hardly into that domain when he saw the first patrols, seasoned soldiers whose alertness indicated respect for their new enemy. Whatever had happened while Gird was underground with the gnomes, it had ended all complacency in the outlying holdings. Gird spent an uncomfortable half-day lying flat among dripping bushes as the patrols crossed and recrossed the route he had planned to take. When dark fell, he extricated himself, muttering curses, and edged carefully around the hill and down a noisy watercourse. Here the water noises would cover any he made.
Even with his caution, he was nearly caught. If the sentry had not coughed, and then spat into the water, Gird would never have known that the dark shadow of a boulder was actually a person. He stopped where he was, wondering if he'd been seen. Another cough, a muttered curse. Gird crept away from the stream's edge, feeling the ground under his feet carefully. He could not stay here, and he could not go back—not without knowing where the other soldiers were. He made his way into the tangle of rocks on that side of the stream, and eased his way up onto one of the huge boulders. From that height, he could just see a twinkle of firelight downstream and below. The sentry had probably been told to climb where Gird now was, but up here the night breeze was cold and raw; the man had slid down to get out of the wind. Gird flattened himself on the cold hard stone and thought about it.
With his gnomish training in mind, if he'd been the person responsible for that camp, he'd have had sentries upstream and down, and scattered through the woods. Scattered where? His un-gnomish experience told him that men, like the sentry whose cough had revealed him, cared for their own comfort. No matter how wisely a commander had sent them out, they would each choose a place that combined the maximum of personal safety and comfort with sufficient—to that individual—performance of the assignment. If he could figure out what that was, he could get around the camp in safety. If he made a mistake, they would all be after him.
One simple answer was to backtrack upstream and swing wide around the camp. That would work if he didn't then run into another patrol. He could think of no reason why Gadilon would have another patrol out to the south, but who could read the lords' intent? Or he could try to angle away from the stream, through the brush and woods, and hope to avoid any other sentries without losing so much ground. If the streamside sentry represented the distance from the camp that all of them were posted, that should be possible. He was still debating this with himself when he heard horses' hooves in the distance, a cry of alarm from the camp, and a trumpet call. The sentry below him gasped, and started back for the camp at a run, falling over rocks and bellowing as he went.
Gird stayed where he was, trying to understand what was going on. More lights appeared: flickering torches moving between the trees. Loud cries, shouted commands, responses from distant sentries. He felt a little smug that they were coming from the radius he'd guessed. He wished he could get closer, and had started down from the rock when he heard the unmistakable clash of steel on steel. More yelling, more screams, more noise of hoofs, weapons, another trumpet blast cut off in mid-cry. He could hear noise coming his way, as several men thrashed through the undergrowth, stumbled over obstructions. They came near enough that he could hear their gasping breath, the jingle of their buckles and mail, the creak of leather. Behind them were more; someone shouted "There they go!"
With a crunch of boots on gravel, they were beneath him. He could just make out two or three dark forms against the starlit water, the gleam of starlight along a weapon's blade. One there was wounded, groaning a little with every gasping breath. Gird lay motionless, hoping no one would notice the large shadow flat on the top of the boulder.
"Don't let 'em get away!" he heard from downstream. "Follow that blood trail." One of the men below him cursed viciously.
"We got to move," he said. "They'll find us, and—"
"Per can't go farther," said another. "We'll have to fight 'em off."
"We can't." A pause, then, "We'll have to leave 'im. He's the blood trail, anyway. They find him, dead, they'll think that's it."
"No! They'll know he couldn't have got this far alone. 'Sides, he's my sister's husband; I'm not leaving him."
"Suit yourself." One of the shadows splashed into the stream, and started across. The other threw a low-voiced curse after him, and backed against the rock on which Gird lay.
Now the pursuers were in sight, the light of their torches swinging wildly through the trees. Gird saw rough, bearded faces, men wearing no livery, or even normal clothes, but the skins of wild animals roughly tanned and crudely fashioned. They carried swords and pikes, stained already with blood. Gird dared not lean out from his perch to see the men at the foot of his rock—but he suspected that they were Gadilon's soldiers, in his livery, and these others were—what? Not any he had trained, he was sure, but who? Gadilon's peasants?
He slid back carefully over the crest of the boulder, hoping that their attention was fixed on the men below. What happened then was clear enough by the sound of it: a low growl of anticipation from the pursuers, a challenge by the one man still able to fight, and bloody butchery thereafter. It did not last long. One of the attackers said, "There was another—look here, he took to the water."
"No matter. Well find 'im by day, or let 'im carry word to his lord—he'll get no comfort of it. One back from each patrol will do us no harm." Then the speaker raised his voice to carry over the stream's chuckle. "Hey—you coward! You count's man! Go tell yer count what happened, and tell 'im 'twas Gird and his yeomen! Tell 'im to shake in 'is boots, while he has 'em to shake in."
Gird felt the blood rush to his skin at that; he nearly jumped up where he stood to deny it. How
dare
they use his name! His ears roared with the pressure of his anger; as his hearing cleared, he heard one of the men laugh.
"Diss, what're you playing at? D'you really think the count'll believe this night's work was Gird's?"
"What do I care? If he thinks it's peasants, he'll ride his peasants harder, and spend less time looking for brigands. If he blames every robbery and ambush in his domain on peasants, isn't that good for us? And if he doesn't believe it—if he thinks to himself it's a trick of brigands—he'll wonder why brigands would lay that crime on peasants. If maybe we're allies. And the peasants . . . if they'll skimp to send grain to Gird's yeomen, why not to us—if we convince them we're with them."
Gird dug his fingers into the rock to keep himself from plunging right into that—which was the same, he knew, as plunging a knife in his neck. The brigands all laughed; he heard them stripping the bodies of the count's soldiers, before they left them naked and unprotected in the night, to return to the fire and carousing with the guard-sergeant's ration of ale. Gird heard them ride away, in the hours before dawn. He waited until he could see clearly before slithering down from his perch, stiff and miserable, to see for himself what they'd done.
The dead soldiers looked no different from any other dead; he had not forgotten, in his half-year with the gnomes, how the dead looked and smelled. He squatted beside them and closed their eyes with pebbles. They were enemies, but not now his; he had not killed them, and he felt he owed them that basic courtesy. They had stiffened; he could not straighten their limbs. But he found mint already green beside the creek, and laid a sprig on each of them. Then he plucked a handful of it, and went toward the deserted camp. There he put mint on each of the dead, soldier and brigand alike, unsure why he was doing it except that it felt right. This was not his fight; he disliked both sides with equal intensity.
The brigands had stripped the soldiers of weapons, armor, clothes, and money (or so Gird judged, finding a couple of copper crabs trampled into the ground), but had left behind what food they had not eaten themselves. Gird saw no reason not to take it. He stuffed the flat loaves and half a cheese into his shirt. At the soldiers' picket lines, he found the cut ends of ropes where the brigands had stolen the horses; continuing downstream, he found another dead soldier, the downstream sentry.
He went as warily as he could, aware that he now had two sets of enemies: when Gadilon found out about his patrol, these hills would hum with soldiery, but at the same time the brigands would not be happy to find a real Gird in their midst. By midday, he had put a good distance between himself and the site of the brigand attack, but he felt no safer. The gnomish maps told him that he needed to cross all Gadilon's domain, south to north, then open sheep pastures shared between several lords and peasant villages, before he would be back in territory he knew by sight. The nearest barton—as of the previous fall, he reminded himself—was a group of shepherds who called their settlement Farmeet.