The newcomers, Gird discovered, had already grasped the idea of traveling quietly, with scouts ahead and behind. He led them back up the stream they had camped beside. The sick man looked as if he would definitely recover; they carried him in a pole-slung litter. All of them carried some piece of equipment, for Gird did not intend to return to that camp until it had had time to clean itself.
"I suppose you want us to dig a jacks trench every time we stop?" asked Felis.
"Yes." Gird was ready to glare, but Felis merely shook his head, and grinned. They were halted for a noon rest on the shady side of a hill, where the scrub grew barely more than head-high. Summer heat shimmered on the slopes around them, and baked pungent scents from the scrub.
"So will you tell us your plan now?"
Gird looked around at the others. They were all listening; he wondered how they would react. Was there a better time? He thought not. But instead of answering Felis directly, he asked, "How many men did you have when you started?"
Felis frowned thoughtfully. "I didn't start it—but there were three hands when I came. Then Irin died, and then two more came, and then six, but one of them died soon; he'd been hurt. Three hands, four—it went up and down."
"And how many other groups are there, and how large do you think they are?"
Felis began tapping the ground, as if a map, to remind himself. "I heard of one away westward—beyond your village—Diamod went there once and said they had less than two hands of men. North and west, another, but I heard that one was captured and killed, all of them. Two hands, maybe three. South and east, someone told me of a large group: five or six hands of men, maybe more. But I heard they have fields, and can feed themselves."
Gird nodded. "That's what I thought. There may be more groups, but nowhere more than the farmers can support. We can't feed ourselves. So a day or two of travel between groups—each one drawing food from two or three villages—and the villages are so poor. Four hands is a large group; five is too large for most. And without proper care for the food they do get, some of it is wasted. Diamod told me several years ago there were enough in the Stone Circle to fight a war, but ten soldiers here and fifteen there and twenty over here don't make an army. They have to be together. Organized. Training together."
"But I don't see—"
"We need the Stone Circle: we need a place for men to go when they've been outlawed or have lost their holdings. But we need an army more. And we need an army that can feed itself during training, house itself during training, clothe itself—"
"It's impossible!"
"No, I don't think so." Gird let his eyes wander from face to face. "We were all farmers, craftsmen—we fed ourselves, housed ourselves—and in the evenings, off-season, we sat around our bartons or our homes and talked."
"Yes, and you yourself would have nothing to do with fighting when you still had your holding," said Diamod boldly.
"That's true, because you wanted me to sneak away and teach you drill—go away from my home, and my work, and risk discovery both ways, to teach strangers. I say now I was wrong. But what I told you then still has force. Suppose you had said, 'Let us teach you how to fight and defend yourselves—here in your own village, you and the men you know best fighting shoulder to shoulder to protect your own against the lords.' Do you think I might have answered differently?"
A long silence. Diamod opened his mouth and shut it. Felis pulled a grass stem, chewed it, and spat it out. The others said nothing, but all the faces conveyed shifting thoughts and emotions. Finally Triga said, "You mean for us to go into villages and teach farmers what you've taught us—by ourselves?"
"It won't work," said Herf suddenly. "It can't—the lords would see it, their guards would. Right under their noses, peasants drilling? They'd be hung on the spikes by nightfall."
"There aren't guards stationed in every village," said Ivis. "If they would have their own scouts out, to see anyone coming—"
"Better than that," said Gird. "Think how our villages are built. Every cottage, nearly, has its own—"
"Barton!" said Fori, eyes suddenly alight. "Walled in—no one can see, but over the back gate—"
"That's right," said Gird. "Bartons. Big enough to teach a few men to march together, use sticks. No one notices when the men go into a barton of an evening, or the noise that comes out of it—men telling jokes, drinking ale—" He could suddenly feel it, the mellow flow of liquid down his throat that would ease his joints and make the old stories new again.
Felis pursed his lips. "Not everyone in the village will do it—what about those who don't? What if they report it?"
"Start small. One or two, let the locals decide who else to ask. Nobody in my village would've reported it to the steward, though some wouldn't come. Let 'em stay home. And if the guards do come, what's to see? A group of men talking and singing, same as any evening."
On face after face, Gird could see the idea take root and grow. He watched its progress through the group. It would work; he knew it would work. It had come to him in a flash of insight so intense that it waked him out of a sound sleep. He had been planning to try it, but the attack on Rahi had come first.
"So: you train us, and we train them. Just those of us here could reach five, six hands of villages, and if every village trained four hands of men—"
"But would we try to move in with them? Someone would surely notice that—"
Gird nodded. "I know. I'm not sure what the best way is, but I'm sure that training the farmers at home is part of it." He stretched, relieved that they seemed to understand his point and agree. "But right now, each one of you must know everything I know—and be able to teach it. And if you know something I don't, you must teach me."
"You don't know everything?" asked Felis slyly.
"No. I didn't know how to plait baskets or cook frogs; Triga taught me that." Triga grinned and raised a fist. "We all share some knowledge—the farmers among us, at least. But many of us have special skills, something extra, which we can share with others."
By Midsummer Eve, Gird had both groups drilling with sticks. They camped apart, for he still could not feed both at once. One campsite lay just within the east side of the wood, and the other was near (but carefully not in) Triga's bog. But the flow of information, skills, and supplies went back and forth almost daily. They drilled apart three days, and came together on the fourth, to practice larger group movement outside the forest, on a grassy hillside.
Both camps had the clean, tidy look of a good master's workshop—and it was a workshop, as Gird explained often. If they had an army someday, of farmers who had trained in their bartons, they would have to have camps in the field, and those camps would have to have jacks, kitchens, shelters for wounded, space to store supplies. Here, in small groups, they could learn what worked, and later they could show others.
As summer days lengthened, the food-gathering groups were able to bring back more and more supplies. Gird insisted that some of these be stored for emergencies. They dried fruit on lattices of plaited grass, cut the wild grain and threshed it, dug edible tubers, honed their skill at slinging and throwing. Archery was harder. Of the four bows between the two groups, one had broken early, and it seemed no one could make good arrows. Still, the best of them occasionally hit a bird or rabbit. Each camp had its own handmill, and when there was grain to grind, they had bread. Gird toyed with the idea of trying to brew some ale, but they really couldn't afford the grain. Maybe after harvest time, he thought—next winter would be cold and dismal enough, without giving up ale entirely.
Gird rotated all the men through all the tally groups, but noticed which had special abilities. The whittlers, sure of an appreciative audience, worked even when not on actual tool duty, fashioning spoons and bowls, dippers and pothooks. Some of the men took to the old stone tools, and one liked to spend his spare time chipping new blades from flint cobbles. No one sneered, now, at those who could make useful baskets, or sew neat patches.
On Midsummer Eve, lacking ale, they drank the fresh juice of wild grapes and sat out under the stars, singing the old traditional songs. Like Midwinter, Midsummer was a fireless night, but this one was not dark and cold. In the freshness before Midsummer dawn, when every sweet scent of the earth redoubled its strength, Gird lay in the long grass and wished they could have women with them. The other men, too, were restless, remembering the traditional end to all those traditional songs, when the brief hours of darkness were spent first hunting the elusive flowers said to bloom only that night, and then celebrating them. Gird thought of his first night with Mali, of all the Midsummers he'd spent with her. A breath of air moved, wafting still more scent past him, and he rolled up on one elbow. She had been dead, and he had not gone back out, but now he was out, and he could not stop thinking about it.
Of course it would not do. He made himself get up and walk around the others, who pretended to be asleep. The two or three who were really asleep risked dangerous dreams, on Midsummer night. They snored, or muttered, and tossed uneasily. He did not wake them, walking farther away into the stillness. Dew lay heavy on the grass, gray-silver in the starlight, in the slow light of dawn that rose from the east in faintly colored waves.
Two days later, he had just come from the eastern camp, and was nearing the other, when Diamod met him on the trail.
"I have to tell you something," he said. Gird stopped. He had made a rule that they not talk on the trail, even when chance-met like this. But Diamod's expression declared this an emergency.
"What, then?"
"Your daughter Raheli—"
Gird's heart contracted; his vision hazed. "She's dead." Despite the two reports he had had, he had continued to worry, sure that she might yet die of her injuries or her sorrow. He had worked harder, to keep himself from thinking about it, but her face haunted him.
"No—she's come."
Relief and shock contended; he felt that the ground beneath him swayed "Come? You mean—come here? They wouldn't keep her?"
"They would have been glad to keep her; she would not stay. She has come here, and she insists she is joining us."
"No!" That was loud enough to send birds squawking away in the forest canopy overhead, and loud enough for any forester to hear. Gird bit back another bellow and lowered his voice. "It's impossible. She can't—"
"You come tell her that. She followed me here from Fireoak—I didn't even know she was following until I reached the wood, and then I couldn't—I didn't think I should—send her back. Or that she'd go."
Rahi alive, and well enough to walk so far—that was as much as he'd hoped. More. He wanted to see her, hold her, know she was whole and strong again. He remembered the blood on her face, on her body. When he looked at Diamod, the man seemed to have understood his very thought, because he nodded slowly.
"Yes, she has a terrible scar, and no, she seems not to mind. She wore no headscarf. Something else, she's dressed like a man."
Gird shook his head, shrugged, could not think of anything to say. Most headstrong of his children—how was he going to convince her to leave? If she had come this far, it would not be easy, and if she refused to obey him, it would cause him trouble with the men.
"What has she said to the men?" he asked Diamod.
"She said she was your daughter, and must see you. She had told me she meant to stay, but when I left she had said nothing else to the others."
"Thank Alyanya's grace for that," said Gird. He shivered, flicked his fingers to avert the trouble, whatever it had been (and he could guess well enough) and started on toward the camp.
The other men were all busy, carefully busy and carefully avoiding the tall, strongly built person in trousers and man's shirt who sat motionless on a log, back toward him. Gird paused to look at her. From that distance, in that garb, she looked like a boy, her short dark hair (she had cut her hair!) rumpled, her big hands busy with a knife on a stick of wood. What was she whittling? When had she learned to whittle—or had she known, and he not known it?
He came toward her; the other men's glances at him alerted her, and she turned, then stood. She stood very straight, as she had when expecting punishment in childhood—she had been the one of his children most likely to defy him. Now he could see the ruin that blow had made of her beauty, a scar worse than her mother's, puckering the corner of her mouth. Her jaw had been broken, by the unevenness of it now. Her eyes held nothing he had seen before, in her years as child and maid and young wife. They might have been stones, for all the softness in them.
He could not bear it. He could not bear it that his daughter, his (he could admit it to himself) favorite, could look at him so. "Rahi—" he began. Then he found himself reaching for her, sweeping her into his hug despite her tension when she felt his hands. She stiffened, pushed him back, then stood passively. That was worse. He held her off, searching her face for some part of the girl who had been. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't think—"
"I came to stay," she said, as if it were a ritual she had memorized. "I came to fight. I am strong. I have no—no family ties."
"Rahi—!" He was appalled. But she went on.
"No child, no husband, nothing—but the strength of my body, the skill of my hands. I can be useful, and I can fight."
The other men had vanished, into the trees. Gird did not blame them; he was grateful for their tact. He was also sure they were listening avidly from behind every clump of leaves.
"I can't marry again," Rahi went on. "I'm—too noticeable. Imagine going before a steward or bailiff. And the healers say that fever may have made me barren, as well as killing my—the—child. And I don't want to marry again. I want to do something—" She snapped the stick she'd been whittling, and flung the pieces away. "Something to end this, so no other young wife will see her husband die as I did, and then have it be his wrongdoing—" She looked up at Gird, eyes suddenly full of tears. "I have to do this, Gird, here or somewhere else."
She had not called him Da, or the more formal father: she had called him Gird, like any of his men. That was another pain, even closer to the deep center of his heart where father and child were bound in ancient ties. He blinked back his own tears, and brushed away those that had run down his cheeks. His beard was wetter than he expected.
He tried to stay calm. "Rahi, love, we can't have women here, in the camps. Not to fight—and it's not fair otherwise. It's not safe."
"Was I safe tending my own hearth at home?" she asked bitterly. "Is any woman safe? Are we safer when the strongest men are off in the woods playing soldier?" Gird grasped at the weak end of that.
"That's going to change; I thought of a way for men to learn soldiering in the villages." He explained quickly, before she could argue, and when he finished she was nodding. "So you see—" he said, easing into it.
"I see," she interrupted. "I see that the men will get some training, and then you'll take them away to a battle, leaving the women unprotected."
"That's not what I meant!"
"That's what it will be. You know that. Remember, years ago, when you told me I was as good as another son? After Calis died? I know many girls aren't that strong—but not all men are as strong as you, yet you've got Pidi here—little Pidi that I can sling over my shoulder—and you think I can't—"
"It's not just strength. You know that." Gird was sweating; he could feel it trickling down his ribs, and his hands were slick with it. "What about—you know—all those women things—"
Rahi stared at him a moment, and then snorted. A chuckle fought its way up, and she was suddenly convulsed with laughter. "Oh, Da—oh, Lady's grace, it still hurts when I laugh, but—You mean you never knew?"
"Knew what?" He could not imagine what she thought was funny about the problems having women in camp could bring.
Her hand waved, vaguely, as she tried to stop laughing, and hiccuped instead. "Mother never told you? All those years and you thought—" she shook her head, laughing again. Finally, eyes streaming tears, she regained control. Now, flushed from laughter, she looked like his daughter again, like her mother—all the warmth and laughter that Mali had brought into his life regained. Gird stared at her, halfway between anger and delight. She took a long breath, with her hand to her side, and explained "Da, women have ways—herbs, brews—we're not like cows, you know. We're people; we understand our bodies. If it's a bad time—and I agree, fighting a war would be a bad time—we take care of it and don't make a mess. I can't tell you; it's our knowledge."
"But Issa—"
"Oh, Issa!" Rahi shook her cropped hair. "It doesn't work for some women, or they won't bother—that kind wouldn't want to learn soldiering anyway." She chuckled softly, a gentler sound. "I thought I would never laugh again, and here the first time I see you, I disgrace myself—"
"It's no disgrace to laugh," Gird said. He wanted to reach for her again, hug her, stroke her hair as he had when she was a small child. But she was a woman, and a woman who had suffered too much to be treated as a child. "Even after sorrow—it comes, sometimes, when no one expects it."
Rahi nodded. "Mother used to say it was the Lady's way of making it bearable. Tears in joy, laughter in sorrow, she said, were a sign of the Lady's presence." She reached out to him, her hand almost as large as his own, and patted his shoulder. "There—now I've grieved, and laughed, and called you Da again, which I said would not do, were I your soldier. But I'm staying."
And from that decision he could not budge her, not then nor that night nor the next day. Their argument was conducted in the spurious privacy of the camp, with everyone not listening. Between bouts, Rahi demonstrated her usual competence, fitting her contributions of work and skill in effortlessly. Gird began to notice covert grins, sidelong sly looks at her, at him. The skin on the back of his neck itched constantly from being looked at. His ears felt sunburnt. Rahi did not take part in the drill sessions, but she was clearly watching and learning the commands.
After the afternoon's stick drill, Ivis lingered when the others dispersed to their assigned groups. "Your daughter—" he said, his eyes down.
"Yes." Gird bit it off. He was going to have to talk about it, without having solved it, and it could do nothing but harm.
"You told us."
"Yes." He'd forgotten that, by this time. He looked at Ivis, who was staring past his shoulder. Gird resisted the temptation to look around—was Ivis looking at Rahi?
"She's a lot like you," Ivis said.
"She's—what?"
"Like you. Gets things done. Strong—more than one way."
Gird grunted. He could see where this was leading, and he didn't like it. Had Rahi been talking to them behind his back?
"She hasn't said anything, but we couldn't help hearing a little . . ."
Gird squinted up at the bright sky showing between the leaves, and asked himself why Mali hadn't had all boys. Life would have been a lot simpler. "She wants to stay; you all know that. She can't. She's stubborn, like her mother." And me, his mind insisted silently. "Stubborn on both sides," he admitted aloud. "But it's impossible."
Ivis dug a toe into the dirt and made a line. "She's not like most women."
Gird snorted. "She's like all women. Wants her way, and expects to get it. But with Rahi, it's even more so. Her next older brothers died, in a plague. That may have been it, though Mali—my wife—she was a strongminded woman too." As if she were alive again, he heard her voice in his ear, as she had warned him that first night at the gathering. I will not guard my tongue for any man, she'd said, and she'd kept that vow. Along with all the others. And had taught Rahi the same, if teaching had anything to do with what was born in the blood. He could feel his own blood contending. If only Rahi had been his son—but then it might have been Rahi dead, and his (her?) wife left. Gird shook his head. That was too complicated; what he had was complicated enough. How could the men respect a leader who couldn't make his daughter obey?
"We think she's earned it—if she can, if she's strong enough—"
"Strong enough! Of course she's strong enough; that's not the point."
Ivis cleared his throat noisily. "Gird—it is the point. To us, anyway. You've worried about some of the men here having the strength to lead, or the courage when it comes to a real fight. She's—she's your daughter, and we know what happened. She should be here."
Gird stared at him. "You think that? But if I let her—what about others?"
Ivis cleared his throat again. "The—the one thing I did hear her say, to Pidi, was that women could train at home too. In the bartons."
In the bartons I don't have yet, Gird thought furiously. In the bartons that are safe—if they are safe—only because the men always gather in the bartons. Again a memory of Mali forced itself into his consciousness, the day of their wedding when she had faced the ridiculous ceremonies with no embarrassment whatever. Were women really just humoring men with all that squealing and shyness? Could they—he had no doubts about Rahi, who could probably ride wild horses if the chance occurred—could other women really learn to fight, use weapons, kill—alongside men?
Ivis was watching his face with a wary expression. "She said I shouldn't say anything to you," he said.
Gird glared at him. "I thought you said you hadn't talked to her!"
"I haven't. I would have, but she wouldn't. Said it was up to you and her to work out, and I should stay out of it."
"Giving you orders, eh?" For some reason that amused him; he could feel Rahi's resentment of someone's interference, her fierce determination to convince Gird by herself.
Ivis grinned, catching the change in Gird's mood. "You notice I didn't obey."
"So how many of them agree with you?"
Ivis relaxed still more. "I didn't talk to all, but all I asked agreed that they would let her stay."
Gird muttered one of the old guards' curses he hadn't used in years; Ivis clearly had never heard it and didn't understand. "Go away, then. I want to talk to her." Ivis vanished, as if whisked away by magic. Gird looked around for Rahi. There she was, grinding grain as placidly as any housewife by her hearth. He had a sudden sinking feeling, as if a hole had opened in his chest, and let his heart fall out on the ground. Could he possibly be about to do what he was going to do? He swallowed against the feeling, and called her. She looked up, smiled, and came to him. He noticed that she had, even in that moment, scooped the ground meal into a bowl, and laid another atop it to keep out dirt.
This time he looked her over as if she were a real recruit. Within a finger of his height, broad shouldered, as Mali had been. Thin, from the fever, but with strength in her arms. The scar down her face made her too distinctive to send into a village or town—but she could still see out of both eyes, and had two good arms and legs. He had men with less. She stood there calmly, not arguing. Not intending to change her mind, either; he could feel the force of that determination as if it were heat from a fire.
"I don't think you understand," he said without preamble, "how hard it is for me. I've already seen you lying at my feet in a pool of blood. I don't think I can stand seeing that again."
Her face paled. "You don't understand how hard it is for me," she said. "I lost that blood, lost my husband, lost my child, and could not strike even one good blow to stop it. I know I cannot stand that—I will not be that helpless again. Not ever. Either you teach me, or—I don't know, but I'll learn somehow."
"And die somewhere I never know," Gird sighed, near tears again. "And that will be my fault, as it was my fault for not protecting you before. You give me a hard choice, Rahi." She opened her mouth, but he shook his head. "You would say, as your mother said often enough, that it is a world of hard choices. All right. I give in, on this one thing. But if this kills you, Rahi, make sure it is not because you failed to learn what I could teach."
If she felt triumph, she did not show it. Only in the corner of her eye, the little wrinkle twitched, whether from surprise or delight, he could not tell, and would not ask.
"And you were right," he went on, "to call me 'Gird' when you first came. If you would be a soldier, then it is for that you are here, and not as my daughter."
She nodded, gravely. "Yes, Gird."
"And if you—if you need—" Now her eyes crinkled in what could only be laughter. Gird glared at her. "Dammit—!"
"Gird, if I cannot stay as a soldier, for some reason, I will tell you at once, and go. But it is not likely, even without what I know of herbs: the healer said so."
His arms ached to hold her, comfort her, restore to her the promises of her childhood—the promises all children should have. But it was too late for that. She looked content with what life had left her; he had no choice now himself. Her future was no more doubtful than his—and, he thought sourly, the only doubt was when they'd be strung on the spikes, not if.
But when she returned to grinding, and he saw by the glances passed around the campsite that everyone understood, and accepted his decision (he could not believe many of them actually approved) he was able to return to planning with a lighter heart. If he could establish training in the villages, bartons full of trained men—his mind put other women in that picture, and he hastily blanked them out—in time they would outnumber the lords and their guards. Would any of the guards come over? They had come from peasant ranks. If they saw their friends and family actually fighting, would that make a difference? He let himself imagine a series of battles in which the peasants stood their ground, in drill array, using their sticks and shovels, pushing back the guard and then the lords themselves. Of course, he still didn't know whether the sticks would work as he saw them in his head.
He sighed. Time to start the next level of training. He had in mind straw-stuffed dummies tied onto logs, to simulate horsemen. It would help if he'd ever actually ridden a horse, and knew in his own body how firmly a horseman could sit. He'd seen men bucked off—he remembered trying to ride calves—but that was not like a soldier on horseback firmly in the saddle. Still, it ought to work. If they could unseat horsemen, they could ambush mounted patrols. Even more important, if they could unseat horsemen—even one horseman—even a straw dummy tied to a log—it might convince the farmers in their villages that it was worthwhile spending all those hours learning to drill and use a stick.
Making the straw dummy was quick work, in the hot days of tall grass and long afternoons. Cob suggested weighting the body with rocks; Triga had the even better suggestion of seating a real person on the log, and pulling him off slowly—to see how a person felt—and then making the dummy feel the same. That turned into several days of experiment, with one after another trying to keep his seat on the log with friends pushing and pulling from one or both sides. Gird took a turn, wondering if it felt anything like riding a real horse, or if it could be a way to learn. It was easy to wrap his long legs around the log and hang on, but hard to keep his balance when someone yanked his arm. After his second fall, he watched Ivis on the log.
"We don't need the straw dummy," he said, "As long as we pad the ends of our sticks, and remember that this one is a friend. Whoever's up can tell us which moves are hardest to counter."
The rider—Ivis, then others—was equipped with a reed "sword" and laid about vigorously to simulate resistance. Slowly at first, then with increasing confidence and speed, they all learned where to strike a rider to throw him off balance. The game became so popular that Gird had to remind them that there were other ways—and enemies—to fight, or they would have spent all their time knocking one another off logs.
Rahi, in the meantime, had merged almost invisibly into the troop. Gird was acutely aware of her presence for the first few days; then he went off to the other camp, and when he returned it was as if she had always been there—but as a soldier, not his daughter. She did not avoid him, exactly, but she did not spend her free time with Pidi, or with Gird, and even seemed to steer clear of Fori. She had her place in drill, and made no more than the usual beginner's mistakes. As he would have expected, she learned fast. Gird waited for something to go wrong, but nothing did.
It was now nearing harvest. After harvest the field-fee collectors would be out; Gird wanted to introduce his barton idea to at least a few villages before then. For that he needed seasoned older men, men the farmers might trust as similar to themselves. They had to be proficient in the drill (although he didn't expect them to teach the farmers much in the short time until harvest—but they had to impress them.) And—perhaps most important—they had to be reliably close-mouthed. He himself would go, of course. Ivis had developed into a trusted lieutenant, as had Cob. Diamod was known in five or six villages as a Stone Circle organizer. Felis, who might have been another possibility, had broken his wrist on his last "ride" as a target, and would not be fit until after harvest.
After long discussions, Gird chose four villages to test his idea: Fireoak, Harrow (where Felis's group had supporters), Whitetree, where Ivis's brother lived, and Hardshallows. Cob and a man from Felis's group went to Harrow, Ivis to his brother, Gird to Fireoak, and Diamod to Hardshallows. They were to spend no more than two nights in the village, and talk to no more than five men.