Older recruits posed other problems. Some had a grievance against a particular lord, and wanted Gird to ensure vengeance. These could turn sour when they found that everyone had a grievance, and Gird thought no one's private reasons more important than another's. Some were obviously the misfits of their villages, quarrelsome bullies who thought Gird would supply weapons and food and an excuse for their violent behavior. Some were spies, as Selamis had been originally, some were crotchety old men who were sure they knew how Gird should run his army, and some were soldiers changing sides, born peasants and now returning to their people—who
also
knew how Gird should run his army. Few of them shared Gird's concern for the time
after
the war, for the kind of land they would have. And they all knew less than they thought they did.
Gird dealt with these as well as he could. What bluff honesty and forthright explanation could do, he did, but when that failed he resorted to his strong right arm and a voice that could, as one of his marshals said, take the bark off a tree at twenty paces. He had the least patience with whiners and those who could find, as the saying went, one grain of sand in a sack of meal.
The army grew, nonetheless, and Gird found that Selamis's ability to read, write, and keep accounts was invaluable. He no longer had to keep in his head the members of each unit, with its marshal and yeoman marshal. Selamis suggested—tactfully—changes in nomenclature, preserving the name "barton" for the original use, and calling tactical units "cohorts" no matter how many bartons went to make them up. Gird agreed, after scowling at Selamis's neat script for a long moment. The gnomes had had names for the units, based on size, from the five-gnome
pigan
to the hundred-gnome
gerist,
but the language of his own people had nothing but "horde" and "skirra." The former meant everyone in the steading or hearthing who could fight, and the latter meant a small raiding party sent to steal livestock. He did not like using one of the magelords' words, but cohort was better than the others.
With Selamis and his most experienced yeomen, Gird worked out a new, more uniform, organization. His cohorts were upwards of 120 hands—though the term "hand" began to fall out of use with the larger unit. Each cohort would have a marshal, and at least four yeoman-marshals. Where bartons had joined to form cohorts, their yeoman-marshals would serve, otherwise the most experienced yeomen could be chosen. Each cohort would divide into tally-groups for camp work, and each tally-group would be supervised by the yeoman-marshal for that section. When the army divided for some reason, Gird would appoint one of the marshals to command whatever group he himself was not with—which led to the title of "high marshal" for such a situation, and—over Gird's initial protests—"Marshal General" for himself.
"They don't have to call you that," Selamis pointed out.
"Thank the gods! Why should they? A general is one of those fancy officers in gold-washed armor with a plume to his helmet; I'm not—"
"But you are, in one way. Commander of the whole army. It's for the records, Gird, and if you send orders—"
"Flattery." Gird eyed Selamis dubiously. The man had good ideas, but he had too many of them, too fast, and was too tactful by half in presenting them. Gird could not doubt his bravery—he had asked to start training while his hands were still sore—but he could not overcome the feeling that Selamis was just a little too smooth.
Somewhat to Gird's surprise, the sier had caused no more trouble—no patrols had come in pursuit, and the guardpost near the bridge was left a pile of rubble. Gird's eastern troop—half-cohort, he reminded himself—returned after several hands of days, full of their own stories of battle. They had "almost" held the sier's cavalry; they had seen no sign of magicks.
Ivis made no comment on Gird's mishaps, but did get him aside to discuss Selamis. "Are you making a yeoman-marshal out
of him?
"
Gird raised his eyebrows. "I hadn't thought. Why?"
"He wasn't in the barton in his village."
Gird sighed. "We went over that. He was an outsider; he'd been given someone's cottage—"
"I don't entirely trust him." Perversely, Ivis's distrust made Gird feel obligated to defend Selamis.
"He's not like us, I'll admit, but he's good enough."
"He was telling Kef what you thought about the lords' powers," said Ivis. "As if you'd told him to. Did you?"
"Well—no. But I don't see that it matters, unless he lied about it. What did he say?"
"Just what you've told me, mostly, and you thought the others should tell you if they'd heard anything more."
"That makes sense. If I'd thought of it, I'd have done the same."
"Yes, but—" Ivis shook his head. "I can't explain it, but he's—he's not solid."
"His wife and daughter died. We heard three days ago, from someone who saw it. He knows—that would unsettle anyone." Gird did not say how Selamis had taken the news; he was not sure himself what that white-lipped silence meant, that was followed so soon by apparent calm. He looked off across the camp, where Selamis at that moment was chatting with someone while scrubbing a kettle. Harmless enough; what was it that unsettled Ivis? Gird remembered that Diamod had unsettled him, with the difference between farmer and craftsman, an indefinable shift in attitude.
By this time they had moved the main camp, shifting west away from Grahlin, and south along one of the arcuate band of hills. Only one of the gnomish maps had been recovered; Gird was trusting Selamis's memory for the rest. The maps looked much the same to him, barring the use of a brush instead of a pen.
The larger camps, and richer resources of summer, allowed refinements he had missed before. One of their number claimed to have made his own brews before, and combined the seeds of early-ripening wild grasses with gods only knew what to produce a potent brew. The taste varied widely from batch to batch, but no one was asking for flavor. Gird found it relaxing to sip a mug in the evening after dark, when the weight of the day's worries seemed to bow his shoulders and put an ache in every joint. It had been a long time—many years—since he could end most days in a pleasant if hazy mood. He had, he told himself, earned it.
It was on one such evening, after a day spent settling the petty disputes which so often infuriated him, that he found himself faced with six newcomers, all women, and all with a grievance. His head had ached since before dawn with the coming storm that drenched the camp in afternoon, and brought a foul stench from the jacks. No one else admitted to smelling it; he'd had to bellow at the marshals before they reassigned their tally groups to digging a new one. Even after the storm, it was hot and sticky, with hardly a breath of breeze and clouds of stinging flies; nothing would dry, and his boots were sodden. For supper they had only cold porridge left from the morning; the storm had caught them by surprise, and all the fires had gone out. So Gird had retired to his favorite stump with a pot of Selis's brew, and let the stuff work the day's irritations out of his consciousness.
He was not happy to be interrupted by the newcomers, and the woman who talked the most had a sharp, whining tone that set his teeth on edge. She had a complaint about the duke's steward in their village, and a complaint about the barton's yeoman-marshal, who did not welcome women. She wanted to tell him in detail about a legal dispute involving one woman's husband's mother and a promised parrion which had then been withheld, as proof of the unreasonable attitude of the steward. His eyes glazed after awhile. He was acutely aware of her disapproval, and that made him even less willing to be sympathetic. The other five women stood shifting from foot to foot as they listened, clumping behind Binis, the speaker, as if she were some sort of hero able to protect them. She didn't look much like a hero, a tall scrawny dark-haired woman with a big nose and very large teeth, hands too large for her wrists . . .
He never did remember when the vague annoyance sharpened into active dislike, and the dislike into anger. Along the edge of his memory was the sight of Binis's face, the expression changing from surprise to dismay to anger and contempt, the faces behind hers mirroring hers as if she were in fact the only real person there—his memory blurred, after that. The next thing he knew, Kef had waked him with the news that Binis was gone, and with her the five newest yeomen. That was the next morning, broad daylight, far later than he usually woke.
"She's gone to tell the sier where we are," warned Kef. "You really made her furious—"
"I said what I had to." Gird rubbed his face, hoping the headache would go away, and wondering what, in fact, he had said. He hadn't drunk that much, and the stupid woman shouldn't have kept nagging at him.
"I know, but—" Kef peered at him. "You should be careful, Gird; that stuff Selis makes would take the hair off a horsehide."
"I'm
fine
." He wasn't, but he would be with a can of cold water over his head and something to eat. If they had anything left. He clambered up, stifling a groan as stiffness caught him in every joint, and looked around.
Something was wrong. He couldn't tell exactly what, but instead of the busy, determined life of the camp he sensed uneasiness, an almost furtive bustle in the distance, and ominous stillness around him. None of his cohort marshals were nearby, and yet he saw no drill in progress, and heard no tramp of feet out of sight. He smiled at Kef, and started toward the hearth. It was bare; the fire burnt out and the stones barely warm. One cookpot sat to the side, and in it was one cold sodden lump of porridge.
"That's yours, then," said a woman walking by—Adar, he remembered after a moment. Widowed, mother of two surviving.
"You've eaten?" he said to Kef, who was still hovering near him.
"Oh yes. Hours ago. I mean—"
"You mean I overslept because I was drunk," said Gird, and prodded the porridge to see how firm it was. He broke off a smaller lump and ate it with difficulty, watching Kefs eyes. They wavered, not meeting his gaze.
"Well—you had a lot to do last night—"
"Is that what they all think?" He took another small lump, and gulped it down without trying to chew it. The stuff would hold slates on a roof in a gale, he thought.
"Oh no. I'm sure they don't—although some—I mean someone said, but I don't know who—"
Gird finished the porridge, cold and gluey as it was, and thought about it. Rahi'd told him to be careful about drinking too much, but she'd always said that. Tam and Amis, too—but that was years ago. And some people always complained that others drank too much. Far as he was concerned, it was those who had neither head nor heart, trying to deny others what they themselves couldn't enjoy. Yet he remembered old Sekki well enough, who always smelled of sour ale and staggered when he walked, day or night—who died in a stinking puddle of his own vomit, one night. The sergeant had pointed him out to Gird and the other recruits—and he knew the sergeant's warnings against drunkeness didn't come from lack of taste for it.
So—had he been drunk last night, and had he thrown away five good yeomen (he wouldn't count Binis) by losing his temper in a drunken rage? Evidently some of the others thought so. Could they all be wrong? They'd all been wrong before, but so had he.
His head throbbed, and the porridge sat uneasily in his belly. He hadn't been really drunk, but then again he had to consider how the others felt, what they thought. He picked up the cooking pot and started for the creek.
"Where are you going with that?" came a sharp voice from behind him. He turned, and grinned at Adar. She reddened.
"Going to clean it," he said. "Don't we have a rule, that laggards to table clean the pot?"
Her mouth fell open, then shut with a snap. "But you—but you're—"
"I can dip water and scour, Adar," he said mildly. "And one thing about rules, they're for all of us. I'm no different." He turned away before she could offer, and stumped down the bank. The first splash of cold water went on his face, then he dipped the pot, scooped up a handful of sand and small gravel, and swirled it around. When he felt with his fingers, the gluey coating of dried-on porridge was still there. Blast. He'd have to really work at it. He looked around for rushes or reeds. Adar was standing on the bank, watching him.
"Here," she said. "This makes it easier." She handed him a lump of porous gray rock, very light for its size. Scrapestone, or scourstone: he remembered seeing similar lumps for sale in city markets, priced far above a village peasant's ability to pay. Mali had always used rushes. But the scourstone took the porridge off the pot quickly, and his knuckles hardly hurt at all. He gave the stone and the rinsed pot back to her.
"Does it pass your inspection?" he asked.
A smile tugged at her mouth. "Better than my breadshovel did yours. I never would have expected
you
to know how to clean pots."
He thought of saying it was simple enough, like most women's work—which had been his father's comment when his mother was sick—but he thought better of it. Simple work could be hard, and since it had to be done, better those who did it should take pride in it.
"When my mother had fever," he said, "my father bade me do kitchen work—my brother's wife was sick, too."
"Ah. And can you cook?"
He grinned, remembering burnt porridge and bread that baked stone hard outside but soggy within. "No, not well. I've tried, and we didn't starve, but no one would choose my porridge or bread. The Lady gave me wit to plow and raise the grain, not prepare it." He did not mention his hearthcakes, which had helped him win over a campful of hungry men. They were poor fare compared to real food, and he knew it.
"You have a brewer's taste for ale," she said, then colored again. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean—"
"Yes, you did. And I gather you all agree. How much
did
I drink last night?"
"Too much," she said. "A pot or so, that I know of."
He wanted to explain about the pain in his knees and hips and shoulders, the steady ache that sapped his strength some days, the tension and fear, that ale relieved. But he remembered—and knew she remembered—the tonguelashing he'd given young Black Seli for getting drunk in a tavern and blabbing about the nearest barton. Black Seli's excuse had been a fever, and he hadn't put up with it.
Rules are for all of us. I'm no different.
Why had he said that, right out loud. It was true, but still. No one knew how hard it was, dragging a mob of ignorant peasants through one battle after another. He looked at Adar, and realized that she was not going to accept that argument. Neither would he, if someone else gave it.