The funeral procession began at the city gates, by the river. Veterans of the war marched, all in blue shirts or with blue rags around their arms; Marshals and yeoman-marshals marched with their staves; craftsmen and merchants and farmers walked in more ragged, but no less fervent, processions. Some groups sang, others marched in silence. Luap, along with the more senior Marshals, carried the poles on which the body rested. Out the palace gates to the west, into the meadows where someone (Luap had forgotten to think of it) had scythed the long grass and the city's gravediggers had dug the grave. Now the little group came forward, and said the ancient words familiar in every peasant village: the father's lament for a son, the mother's lament for her child, the older and younger brother and sister. No one had spoken for the role of wife, and since Raheli lived, no one could take her place as a child, but the crowd together sang the short farewell.
When Gird's body sank into the grave, and the first clods fell, the crowd wept as one, but they rose from that weeping refreshed again, sad but not despairing. Luap, standing by the heap of dirt, felt someone's arm around his shoulders, and looked up to see Cob at his side.
"I'd hoped not to see it," Cob said, shaking his head. "But then, when it came, I was glad—and that makes no sense at all. They say you were there?"
Luap's scattered wits came back to him. Cob, he realized, must have ridden fast to make it here; he'd been at his grange, a hand of days normal travel from Fin Panir. "I was there," he said. He felt tears rolling down his face again, as if a wound had opened.
"I was at the market," Cob said, as if Luap had asked. "There was some dispute the judicar couldn't settle, and they'd called me in. One of those days when you think everyone wants to quarrel and is looking for an excuse. I was ready to break a few heads myself, just to let some sense in, although I told myself it was the weather. Then like a weather change it came over us—I could see it in the faces of the others, as well as feel it. I even looked to see if the wind had lifted the pennants, or a storm had neared, for the change was that sudden, and that strong. One moment scowls and whines and angry voices; the next moment smiles and apologies and . . . I've never known anything like it. The two men who'd started the fuss turned to each other and shrugged, and the quarrel unknotted like greased string. I felt suddenly stronger and young again, convinced that Gird's latest revision wasn't silly after all, but would work."
Luap had not had leisure to wonder what had happened beyond the immediate environs of the city; he was both fascinated and surprised. Had no one else seen the dark cloud, or recognized it? "How did you find out what really—?"
"Gnomes," said Cob. "Don't ask me how they knew, because I couldn't tell you. The rest of that day went by with everyone in a holiday mood, and no reason for it. I would have worried, but couldn't. Then that night, someone knocked on the grange door, and when I went to see, there was a gnome. 'Your Marshal-General is dead,' he said. 'He has taken away the darkness from your human sight; he has freed your hearts from unreasoning fears and anger.' I'd only met gnomes once before, at that Blackbone Hill mess you were lucky enough to miss;
they
didn't talk like that. Afore I could ask any questions, he was gone, and I heard the beat of their boots, running all in step in the darkness." Cob paused for breath, and cleared his throat. " 'Course, the darkness wouldn't bother them, living understone as they do. But then I roused my yeoman-marshal, and called out the grange, and before dawn I was on my way. Rode day and night, I did, as if I'd lost thirty years, changing horses wherever I could. Met your messengers at Hareth—"
"Come on back," said Luap. "There's plenty of beds here—"
"He threw me, you know," Cob said. "I was with him from the first, from the forest camp Ivis had, back in the Stone Circle days. I remember him coming in with his lad and his nephew, all hollow with hunger, and Ivis bade me wrestle 'im, and he threw me. Flat on my back, I was, before I knew what happened." He shook his head. "Not many of us left, that started with him there, and I don't suppose anyone from his vill at all, barring Raheli."
"I wish she had been able to get here in time," said Luap, meaning it.
Cob shrugged. "You sent word; that's all you could do. Rahi's got sense; she'll understand."
"And now what?" Cob scratched thinning hair. Every Marshal in Fin Panir and all those visiting had gathered in the old palace. "Th' old man's dead, gods grace his rest, and we've to decide what to do. Did he ever say, Luap, aught about what came next?"
"No . . . not really." Luap looked around the table. "He wouldn't be king, remember—I know he didn't want to see a return of kingship. He wanted just what he always said: one fair law for everyone, and peace among all peoples."
"So we've got a Code he revised every half-year, meaning he wasn't convinced it was one fair law yet, and quarrels enough to break his heart—" That was a Marshal from the east, someone Luap barely remembered from the war.
"Not now," Cob said. "No one's quarreling now—it's as if Gird himself cast a charm at us." Even that word, so potent for strife, brought no frown to any face. "It's in my heart that's about what he did, him and the High Lord. Gave us some peace to sort ourselves out and have no more stupid quarrels, no more need to knock heads. But we'd best decide how to do that before everyone wakes up."
"We could have a council of Marshals," said Sekkin.
"We
are
a council of Marshals." Cob scratched his head again. "Thing is, will that be enough? Gird himself knew we couldn't go back to steading and hearthing organization, and the bartons aren't large enough either, no more the granges. We've got to have summat up top, if not a king someone who'll do what Gird did, at least in a way. . . ." His voice trailed off. No one could do what Gird did, and they all knew it. Gird, for all his talk of every yeoman's abilities, had known it.
Eyes came back to Luap. Now, if ever, he could take what Gird had never offered, become Gird's successor. He knew the Code better than any of them, having written more copies than he cared to remember of each revision, and he had traveled more than most of them, carrying Gird's letters to each corner of the land. It would be logical—would have been logical, if he had been other than he was. Might still be logical, except that he had promised Gird, albeit in silence, in that last moment.
"I think," he said slowly, picking his way through possibilities as if along a steep mountain path, "I think Gird thought of Marshals selecting another Marshal-General. Perhaps a council of Marshals, perhaps all of them—I don't know exactly what he thought. Whoever was chosen ought to have been a Marshal, I would think . . ."
"In other words, you don't want the job." Cob had Gird's directness, if not all his other qualities. Luap spread his hands.
"I was never a Marshal. As well, you know my heritage, my vow to seek no command."
"Aye, but you're the one man might stand to both folk as the right person to lead now. It's not like you're taking anything from Gird; he's dead." Others nodded, around the long table. "You know the Code and the land; you were his choice for many things. And it's not like you'd be a king—you'd have plenty of Marshals making sure you didn't revert to that nonsense."
It made sense, but he felt repelled. What he once might have thought his due, for all the work he'd done, what he had wanted when he thought no one would give it to him, he now did not want. The thought of having to perform Gird's daily duties shepherded by Marshals who would no doubt look for any deviation from Gird's custom made his skin itch. If he took command—any sort of command—it must be
command
. And besides, he'd promised Gird he wouldn't.
"It would break my vow," he said. Cob nodded.
"All right. Whatever anyone's said, you've always been true to Gird; I've seen that. It's not your fault who your father was, nor any of the rest of it. But that leaves us still with no decision."
He might have changed his mind if they'd pressured him more, but he felt that even with Cob the offer had been as much courtesy as anything else.
"I do think," Cob said, "that we ought to start calling you Marshal—you may not have sought command, but you've been doing Gird's work all this time. If you're not to be Marshal-General, you'll still be needed in any councils, as you were with Gird."
The word popped into his mind from some forgotten conversation. "Why not Archivist?" he asked. "Someone who keeps the records—that's what I really am. You all earned the title of Marshal, leading yeomen—I haven't done that."
"Makes sense," said Donag, down the table. "Like a scribe, only more so, eh? Judicar and scribe together, maybe. You'll write Gird's life, won't you?"
He had not actually thought of that, in spite of having written accounts of the war, battle by battle. He had been hampered by Gird's insistence that he include only the barest facts; the time he'd tried to explore the meaning of a battle to the morale of both sides, following a model in the old royal archives, Gird had insisted he rewrite it. "You don't know what they thought, or even what most of our people thought: you only know who was there, and who won." But it came to him in a rush how much good he could do, writing about Gird, making Gird come alive for later generations, so that those who had never met him would understand how great a man Gird had been.
"Yes," he said to Donag, to all of them, to his own memory of Gird. "Yes. I will write Gird's life."
Aris, dressing carefully to take his part in Gird's funeral procession, felt guilty that he felt no more pain than he did. He had loved the old man as the grandfather he had never known; he had admired him as the hero who had singlehandedly routed the wicked king. How could he be taking this so calmly? Only last Midwinter Feast, when his healer's eye had recognized that Gird's health was failing, he had spent several miserable days trying to hide his grief until Seri talked it out of him. He was not ready to lose Gird's wisdom, he told himself. He was not ready to lose that straight look, the one that made him feel as if Gird were seeing into his head, finding all the messier corners of his mind. Yet—he had cried only briefly. His appetite was good. He had carried out his duties as yeoman-marshal of his grange, to his Marshal's evident surprise and possible distrust. Could he really have loved and respected Gird, if he was acting so normally? Even Seri, usually level-headed and calm, had flung herself on Aris, sobbing wildly, in the first hours after.
You know better
, said an almost familiar voice in his head. Better than what? he wondered, and answered himself: better than to think tears define sorrow. Of course he'd loved Gird, and Gird had loved him. But now they had to honor Gird's memory, and go on with the work.
He rubbed at a possible smudge on his belt-buckle and went out to face his Marshal's inspection. He had advanced from junior yeoman to senior yeoman with the others his age, as had Seri. To his surprise, he had been offered a trial period as yeoman-marshal in this, his second grange assignment. His first Marshal, Kevis, had recommended that he change granges for the next stage of training, and Gird had concurred. Seri's promotion had surprised no one, except perhaps the pompous Marshal she had once played tricks on. And now he would walk at Marshal Geddrin's side, at the head of the third grange formed in Fin Panir.
Geddrin, a massive man whose freckled face usually looked surprised, was frowning at his own image in a polished shield. By its shape, it had been captured from a magelord in the war. "Cut myself," he said out of the side of his mouth. Shaving was a new fashion in the past few years, taken from the merchants and much commoner in cities than in rural granges.
Aris wondered whether to offer to heal it. Geddrin had accepted Gird's word that Aris must be allowed to heal, but it clearly made him nervous to watch. And he might take the offer as an accusation of softness. He moved closer until he could see the cut, then whistled softly, "It'll drip, Marshal, sure's you start singing, where it is. Let me close it for you, and it won't stain the cloak. . . ."
"
Heal
it, you mean," said Geddrin, but without heat. "Say what you mean, Aris. But yes, go on—Gird's seen my blood before; I've no need to look like I was showing off for him."
"Yes, Marshal," said Aris. So small a wound, clean and new, took only his touch and enough breath to make his knees sag. It vanished, leaving Geddrin's face just as rough-scraped and freckled as before.
"If all the mageborn were like you . . ." Geddrin said, wiping the blade with which he'd shaved on a cloth, and slipping it into its sheath. He didn't finish that, though Aris knew the thought in his mind. If all the mageborn were like him, there would have been no war.
One step to Geddrin's rear, Aris led the grange's cohort of yeomen around to the city gates where the parade would start. There the most senior Marshals decided the order of march. Aris listened to the mix of accents, the muttered comments on various Marshals, the rumors already abroad over who would be the next Marshal-General.
"—An' I said to him, your Marshal may be a veteran but he's all hard stone from his eyebrows back. Old Father Gird was tough, but he wasn't stupid."
"What I always say is, the ones you've got to watch is them quiet ones. The nicer they are, the more they're looking for a way into your beltpouch, eh? Isn't that so?"
"—So there we was, Geris and me, not an arm's-length away from old Gird on that horse. An' he was bashing heads, lads, like you wouldn't believe, till one o' them poles got him under the armpit and I was sure he was killed—"
"
And
you and Geris got him back up on his horse. Alyanya's tits, Peli, we've heard that story every drill night since the war. . . ."
"I dunno why they don't get his horse, the way we always heard in the songs. . . ."
"
I
heard nobody's seen that horse these two days."
"Eh? T' old man's horse?"
A silence spread; Aris could pick out the speaker now. A tall, stout woman with graying hair, whose old blue shirt hardly stretched across her front. She nodded, decisively. "I heard it from my daughter, who heard it from a lad who cleans the stables. That very evening, he said, going to tell the old horse, he found the stall empty. And the latch fastened, he said, and that's what she told me."