"I had heard that, back during the war; someone said it was where he learned the craft of war. But others said he had been a farmer all his life. Which was it?"
"I don't know this of myself," Rahi said. "I don't know if I should tell you; he never told me about it and I heard it only in bits and pieces, from my mother and the village women her age."
"If it made him the leader he was, it should go in his life," Luap said.
She nodded, slowly. "Very well—but understand that this is a tangled story, and I was a child when I heard it." He waved a hand to urge her on; she continued. "Gird was big and strong, even as a boy; the count's steward saw that and suggested he join the local guard. He trained part time, and his father had payment for his service. When he came to manhood, and would have been made a guard, the count chose to torture a boy who had stolen fruit, and Gird ran away. Arin—the same Arin the wolf killed—brought him back, and the count did not kill him, but the fine and the count's enmity destroyed my grandther's standing in the vill. So Gird gave up all thought of soldiering, and became a farmer in his father's cottage; he had learned, the women said, what came of following foreign gods of war."
"But he had been in long enough to have knowledge—" Luap prompted.
"No—it's before you joined, but remember that he spent that winter understone, with the gnomes. He said himself that what he learned from his old sergeant in the guards was to real soldiering as his own breadmaking was to my mother's. He knew a few things, more than the men who had just run away to live like animals in the woods—but he could not have led an army in war without the gnomish training." She stretched, then pushed herself out of the chair to prowl around his office and peer out the windows. "I think myself, Luap, that his very slowness, his very reluctance to oppose the magelords openly is what made it work. He had no hothead enthusiasm, no boyish illusions, such as I see in the lads and lasses in my grange, who dream of glory. He had a grown man's thought, slow but sure, and when he finally moved it was like a mountain shifting its place."
She looked back over her shoulder at him. "Of course, it would be nice to think he had been working against them secretly his whole life. If he had organized the Stone Circle, if he had planned it all. But if he had, that would mean he had planned to let his mother and mine die of fever, rather than risk the count's ban against harvesting herbs in the wood. It would mean he had planned to use the anger generated by one outrage after another to rouse the peasants . . . that his own anger was false, assumed for one occasion and put off for another. And a false man, Luap, could not have done what he did."
Luap felt hot. She had made no direct accusation, but he felt as he had often felt when Gird insisted on strict, literal truth where a little pruning of a tale would make it more effective. He had been thinking that she would like his story of Gird's life, the way he had emphasized what was really important, and treated the more noisome moments lightly, as necessary contrasts to the main theme. Now he felt uneasy about that.
"Now it's your turn," she said, smiling. "You have said you have part of it written, the part you know from your own experience. Read it to me."
He spread his hands. "Rahi, you've just told me things I didn't know, that will make some changes necessary. Not changes in what happened, but in what the events mean. I'm not writing for the people alive now, who knew him personally, but for those in the future to whom all our time will be as dim as eight generations back is to us. So I must make it clear not only what happened, but why—not only what Gird said, but what he thought."
She frowned at him. "I don't see why that would change anything from the war years."
"It would," Luap said firmly, now determined not to let her see the
Life
until he had added and adjusted and rearranged the new material. "Consider his interaction with the first Stone Circle group he met, for example. Cob has told me that they all thought he had been a soldier, not just a boy in training. It would have been different if he had been—"
"But the facts don't change," Rahi said. "What happened is what happened. At least for what you yourself witnessed, you should have no changes to make."
"I can't agree." He laid his hand flat on the work table. "When I have had time to consider what's already written, in light of what you've told me today,
then
I will show you—but not now."
She looked more puzzled than angry, though he had expected anger at any confrontation. "I don't understand, Luap. You wrote to tell me your
Life
was coming along well; you wanted me to see it; you clearly expected me to approve—and now you look like a man who knows someone else's gold has found its way into his pack."
"It's not that!" he said, feeling his ears redden.
"I didn't say it was—but I don't understand why you've changed your mind. Da said you had notions sometimes—"
Notions. Gird had said that about old women who accused each other of being witches. He had also said it about Luap, in one of their arguments. Luap struggled to find his dignity. "I do not have
notions
," he said. "I am doing my best to make Gird's life memorable and accessible to people who never knew him. I want to do a good job. What you've told me today makes me realize that I haven't done as well so far as I thought. And I'd rather show it to you when I'm more satisfied with it myself."
"As you will." Rahi shrugged, as if to show she didn't care, but the tightness of her expression said otherwise. She was probably thinking
notions
even if she didn't say it again.
For the rest of that visit, she remained more pleasant than he expected, if somewhat cool. She did not quarrel with the Rosemage—in fact, Luap realized, she had not quarreled with the Rosemage in a long time. She did not upset anyone at the Council meetings, except in quietly insisting that Marshals should accept and promote girls as well as boys in barton training.
"It's not necessary anymore," Marshal Sidis said. "You know yourself Gird only allowed it because you started it, and you were his daughter. There's no reason for women to waste their time in training to use weapons, when there's no war."
"That's not so," Rahi said firmly. "You weren't there, but Cob can tell you—he was. Gird came to believe it was both necessary and right—the only fair way. Some say there's no reason for anyone to train, when there's no war—but without training, we'd have the same mess Gird started with. If we're to be safe from another invasion, we must know how to fight—and for the same reasons as last time, women need to know as much as men." She surprised herself by having little anger to control. Sidis, from the northwest, had hardly made it to the war before it was over; he had the title Marshal only because he had led his small contingent and Gird confirmed most such leaders as Marshals if they fought at all.
"The horsefolk women learn weaponskills," she added, "and they were never conquered by the magelords."
Sidis snorted. "No one can conquer them—they simply ride away."
The Rosemage shook her head. "The mageborn tried, Marshal Sidis, in the early years; they wanted to settle the rich pasturelands along the upper Honneluur but the horsefolk drove them back. And it's in our archives that the horsefolk women fought as fiercely as the men, making our defeat sure."
"That may be," said Sidis, "but if every glory-struck girl spends her days in the barton, who'll be weaving and baking, eh?"
"Do the glory-struck boys spend all their days in the barton, in your grange?" Rahi wasn't sure if it was his tone, or the dismissive gesture in which he had indicated that the girls were not serious, but now her anger stirred.
"Well, no, but—"
"And do you find they cannot learn to scythe a field or dig a ditch, because they swing a hauk at drill?"
"That's not what I meant, Marshal Raheli!" His use of her long name was the final flick of the lash.
"Wasn't it?" She had both hands flat on the table, the broad hands she had inherited from Gird; her mother's had been longer. "Have you forgotten, in the years of conquest, that
our
people know Alyanya's blessing comes with the gift of blood, and that women in birthing face the same death that comes in battle? Do you not think it might be well for girls to learn discipline and courage, that our people never fall to ungenerous hearts again? You sound as if you thought it was a bad habit our women picked up from the magelords."
"But then they want to be yeoman-marshals, and the boys complain if the girls are better. They don't think it's fair." Sidis said this as if it answered all objections, then reddened as he realized, from the expressions around the table, that it didn't. Cob almost choked on a laugh. Some laughed aloud. Even Luap smiled. Sidis shifted in his chair, and finally shrugged. "All right. You're Gird's daughter, and no one can argue with you about what Gird said. I still think—but what does that matter?"
"It matters," Rahi said. "It always matters, because what you really think will change the meaning of the words you say. If you think the girls are silly and glory-struck, while boys with the same visions in their heads are sensible and brave, every child in your grange will know it . . . and the sensible, brave girls will find a reason to stay home. And they will be as I was, good young wives to be trampled underfoot of the first tyrant who comes to the door." He started to speak, but she shook her head at him. "No, Marshal Sidis, you must think again. I do not want some child like me, some young girl whose mind is all on baking and weaving, as you would have it, left with no way to defend herself. Even my father, even the man who led the army to victory, could not defend me when an enemy came:
that
is the hard truth of it. There's nothing glorious about a soldier's death, but a victim's death is worse. My father saw it that way, finally: he had seen me near death, when I had no chance to fight, and if I had died on the battlefield, it could not have been worse."
Cob raised his hand, and Rahi sat down. "She's right, Sidis," he said. "It's the old way, after all. Some even believed that women taking up weapons caused less disruption than men, because Alyanya's Curse could not apply."
"I never heard that." It was not quite a snort, but close.
Rahi leaned forward. "You're not a woman. The Lady of Plenty, Alyanya of the Harvests, requires that blood be given for any use of iron or steel in planting or harvesting, isn't that so?"
"Yes, but—"
"And for a man, that means his own blood on the blade: shovel, spade, plow, sickle, scythe, pruning hook, even the knife used to cut grapes. Some folk said—in our village it was said, but I know in others it was different—that Alyanya required the same for using a blade on an animal. Others said that sacrifice was to the Windsteed, or even Guthlac. A man who withheld his blood would be cursed, in his loins and his fields. But for a woman, Sidis, the Lady had already had her sacrifice of blood; a girl cut her thumb once only, to promise the blood of childbearing later, and could use an edged tool with no more concern for Alyanya's Curse. Even in Torre's Song, it is the wicked king who is cursed for bringing steel to flesh, while Torre herself . . ."
"All right." Sidis turned up his hand. "I submit. We shall have granges full of girls, and lads who cannot keep their minds on the drill—"
"If you make clear to them that death follows stray thoughts as an owl hunts mice, Sidis, they should be able to follow the drill. If a girl can distract them, I would hate to have them in battle." Cob, again, with a look at Rahi. "For that matter, look at young Seri, in training here. If it weren't for her, I suspect Aris would wander from healing to healing, help Luap with scribes' work, and never take drill at all. That girl would make a yeoman worthy of any grange, and she's been nothing but good for a dreamy-minded mageborn lad with more talent than sense."
Rahi thought better of Aris than that, but she agreed about Seri. She knew that Seri had cheerfully dealt with a couple of lads who were at the age to see her as a girl, not a fellow-yeoman. Her Marshal had told the tale for a season afterwards. "She wasn't angry, and she didn't make any fuss," he'd said. "Just bashed them once each, told them not to be silly, and got on with it. Now they're her friends, and they've quit smirking at the other girls, as well. Do their courting at the dances, like they should."
Sidis still looked angry and stubborn; despite herself Rahi felt a twinge of pity for him. She hated being argued down, herself, and she knew he would have to come to this on his own before he would really believe it. She tried to think of some way to make it easier for him. Nothing came to her; she wished she had her father's power. Then she remembered how often he had stopped an argument with his fist, and a snort escaped her. Sidis glared.
"I'm sorry," Rahi said. "It's just—I remember Da—Gird—settling matters with his fist. I didn't like it, but here I am doing the same thing with words. I think you're wrong, Sidis, but you have a right to be wrong as long as it takes to change your mind. I don't want you agreeing with me just because I'm Gird's daughter, or Cob is one of the most senior Marshals. Gird himself thought we should talk things out, even if he stopped the talk sometimes; he was right in that."
"I don't understand you," Sidis said. "You change your mind—"
"No. I don't. But I won't try to change yours by force."
He still looked confused, but he nodded. When the time came to vote on the matter, he waited until he saw how the others voted. Then he shrugged. "It worked for Gird," he said. "So why not? We can always change it back if we're wrong." And he tossed his billet on the pile for retaining women's rights in the grange organization.
After the meeting, Rahi was packing her things for the journey back to her grange when Sidis sought her out. "I wanted you to know it wasn't you I objected to, or any of the women who were actually veterans," he said "But most women up where I'm from didn't fight—in fact, most of the men didn't fight. They see the grange drill as something imposed from outside; it's the women who've pestered me to send their daughters home."