The Legacy of Gird (57 page)

Ahead the gnome set off downhill, in that measured but tireless tread, and Gird waved the foremost of his people on. He would stay to see the last of them out, and silence questions.

By dark they were far below the hill, coming into marshy ground. The blackwater bogs, Gird thought. The gnome stopped suddenly, and Gird nearly ran into him.

"Here is good water." The lantern light glittered from a pool that looked as black as the rock of the hill. But when Gird dipped a handful, it was clear, trembling in the light, and tasted sweet. Others knelt, dipped for themselves, and drank thirstily. He could hear the splashes, and the moans of the wounded behind him in the darkness. The gnome touched his arm to get his attention. "This is water that runs clean, and the bog clans know safe ways from here. Do you acknowledge debt?"

There was no alternative. "You have brought us from danger to safe water: I acknowledge owing."

"That is fair. This is the exchange: no humans to go beneath that hill. To gather the herbs of the field, to pasture flocks, it is permitted. It is not permitted to delve in the rock, or build aught of the loose rock of the surface. Granted?"

"Granted." Gird sighed, nonetheless, thinking how he would have to argue the miners into it. He wanted to ask why, but knew he would get no answer. And he was tired, desperately tired. He wanted to know how many they'd lost, and if the wounded would recover, and he wanted to fall in his tracks and sleep.

"What of the magelords?" he asked, determined to get something out of this exchange.

The gnome smiled. Gird remembered that smile from his months in their princedom. "It is not a place for humankind, within that hill. The magelords took what was not theirs; knowing, they took it. We return justice."

The ground heaved, thudding against Gird's feet, and a shout went up from his people. Trees groaned; their limbs thrashed briefly as if in a gust of wind. In the lantern light, the water in the pool rocked and splashed like water in a kicked bucket. Gird looked at the gnome, whose smile broadened.

"Justice," it said again. "No pursuit."

When dawn brightened behind Blackbone Hill, the marshy forest looked much less threatening. Delicate flowers brightened the hummocks of moss; butterflies flicked wings of brilliant yellows and oranges in and out of the sunbeams. They had halted beside an upwelling spring of clear water, that flowed into an amber stream between thick-trunked dark trees. A clearly-marked trail led away downstream from their campsite, and the gnome—who had stayed with them until daylight—said that it led safely to an old settlement of the bog folk, now abandoned, but on another safe trail to Longhill.

Gird counted up his survivors. Only five of Blackbone itself had survived. Their kin from Threesprings had lost but three, and still remained the largest barton. Longhill had lost seven of fourteen; Deepmeadow had lost eight of twelve. Whiterock Ridge had lost all its archers, but no one else, and Hazelly lost only one. Clearspring and Westhill had lost two each. But of those living, a quarter were wounded, unfit for work or fighting for many days.

And the survivors were anything but satisfied with the way the battle had gone.

"You didn't tell us they rockfolk'd be involved," said the yeoman marshal of Hazelly. For someone who had never fought at all before, he was surprisingly pert, Gird thought.

"Us would'nt've let 'un fight in th'mine unless they'd been there," said one of the Blackbone survivors, "They told us away last winter they'd no more patience with the magelord's thievery." He peered at Gird through the morning mist. "But they didn't say what t'would cost
us
. They said you was the best leader—"

Before Gird could answer that, someone from Threesprings broke in. "Ah, them rockfolk! Suppose it was their plan, too, warn't it? And you their hired human warleader?"

"They didn't hire me," Gird began, wondering how he was going to settle this lot. They had good reason to grumble, but so did he; it was not his fault the gnomes had kept the main part of their plan from him. So had the Blackbone Hill folk, for the matter of that.

Westhill, more experienced in living in the country, had done most of the work to make the camp livable. The others learned quickly, if unwillingly: the Westhill yeoman-marshal had a tongue sharpened on both sides. Gird began thinking what to do with this ill-assorted lot. Some of them, from the villages that no longer existed, could come directly into the main army. Others might go home for a time, though the areas of peace shrank day by day.

In a few days, the mood had settled; those who had been most badly wounded were either mending or dead, and everyone else had decided to stay with Gird or go home in a huff. There were only a few of the latter. The rest had begun to recast the tale as they would tell it to friends at home. Gird noticed that the lords' troop grew, and the lords' magicks became ever more spectacular, as they retold it to each other. The survivors from Blackbone Hill itself—including some who had hidden in the houses until the fight passed by, and then escaped around the hill—seemed glad to go to Threesprings, where they had kin.

Gird himself climbed back up the trail to take a last look at the west side of Blackbone Hill in broad daylight. It had not changed, that he could see, and he felt no desire to walk on it again.

He made his way back across country toward Brightwater, with the Westhill yeomen. On their way, they found ample evidence that the war was spreading. Twice they fought off attacks by mounted patrols; once they blundered into the path of a large infantry force, and got away only because they were fitter than their pursuers. Gird wondered where that force had been going; as far as he knew, he had no one active in that direction. They passed more than one burned-out village, inhabited by peasants who fled into the woods when they approached, and slunk out behind them to work the fields.

Gird led them in a careful circle around Grahlin; they were near Burry when they met someone recently from Brightwater, a yeoman Gird remembered only vaguely. His news was mixed. The king's army claimed to have killed Gird, between Gadilon's domain and the gnome lands to the south; it had then marched north, celebrating that victory by burning any village whose lord reported it as rebellious. For some reason, it had gone east, rather than returning in its tracks, and was now at the eastern border of Finaarenis, preparing to march home on the River Road.

"So," Gird said, putting a blunt finger on the map. "That group we saw was probably going to join the king's army. Well. When they get to Grahlin, the sier will have much to tell them, and we can expect them in Brightwater sometime after harvest, no doubt."

According to later reports, the king's army had met with scattered but brisk resistance on its march north; bartons Gird had never heard of had fought individual and combined engagements. In the meantime, Gird's main force had control of the valley in which Brightwater lay, from just south of the River Road all the way to the southern trade road. They had taken two lords' residences, although only servants were there: the lords were off with the king's army, and their families were safe (for the moment) in Finyatha.

Putting all this information together with Selamis and the senior marshals, Gird thought he still had numerical superiority, but most of his troops were ill-armed and had no defensive armor at all. They were short of supplies, in part because Gird did not want to squeeze the remaining farmers. Some smiths had come over to the rebels, it was true, but they had little metal for them to work.

As the summer waned, Gird remembered the gnomes' warning that he must win in one season, or find an ally with money or troops—or both. They had suggested one, which he had been reluctant to approach.

Not for the first time, Gird felt well out of his depth. These wooded hills had taller trees than any he'd known; following a gurgling creek between two of them, he felt he was sinking deeper and deeper into unknown lands. Far overhead, the leaves just changing turned honest sunlight to a flickering green, as unsteady as the water beside him. Most of the undergrowth still showed the heavy green of summer, but one climbing vine had gone scarlet, as if the tree itself were bleeding. Gird shivered when he saw that.

If he had not spent that winter with the gnomes, he would never have come here, so far east, to meet a lord reputedly not so bad as the rest. But if he had not gone to the gnomes, he would never have survived his second season of war. If they had been right about other things, perhaps they were right about the Marrakai.

"Ho!" Gird jumped as if struck, and then stood still, peering about him into the confusion of leaves. Then a man in green stepped out on the trail he'd been following. His guide? Or was it a trap? The man had a staff like his own, and a bow slung over his shoulder. "Are you from the Aldonfulk hall?" the man asked.

"Yes," said Gird. The man moved like someone well-fed and well-rested, full of confidence. The lord himself? Then he remembered what he was supposed to say. "Aldonfulk Lawmaster Karik ak Padig Sekert sends greetings to the lord duke Marrakai."

"Ah. And Kevre Mikel Dobrin Marrakai returns those greetings, through his kirgan."

Gird struggled his way through the names he had heard only in the gnomish accent, and the references, to remember that the kirgan meant heir of law and blood. He stared as the young man came forward. Black hair, green eyes as the lords had sometimes, a face young but already showing character. That sier in Grahlin would have been glad to have such a son. The young man smiled.

"And you must be Gird, the scourge of the west, that we have heard so much about. I'm Meshavre, called Mesha."

"But you're a—" He didn't want to say it, but the young man said it for him.

"A lord's son? The enemy? I hope not that, at least. Yes, Kirgan Marrakai, in formal usage, but this meeting you is hardly formal. Do not your people use one name only, at least in this war? Call me Mesha, then, and I will call you Gird."

He was used to command; his voice carried the certainty that Gird would do what he wanted because he asked it, and he (that voice conveyed) would ask nothing unreasonable. Gird could imagine him dealing with dogs and horses, with wounded men, with crying women, all of them calming under that voice and obeying it. Yet it was reasonable, what he said, and Gird could see no good reason to disobey, nothing that would not make him feel foolish.

"Well," he said, to gain time. "Mesha. Whatever you think of rebellious peasants, that's the first time I've called a nobleborn by a pet name in all my life." He met the young man's eyes squarely, to find surprised respect. Mesha nodded.

"My father was right, then, as were the kapristi. They said you were different, and told long tales of you; my father had heard some of those same tales from Finaarean lords."

"Who told them differently, I would guess," said Gird. He liked the young man; he couldn't help it. Was that the charming he'd been warned about? But the gnomes had said the Marrakai magic had gone long ago, that these lords were no longer magelords except by inheritance.

"I heard only one of them, from the sier whose life you saved. He was divided in his mind; if all the rebels were like you, he might be your ally. But come: let me bring you to a safe place to rest and eat. There's a forester's shelter, down this way." And without another word, Mesha turned and started down the trail. Gird followed, still half-afraid of a trap. But why then would the young lord meet him alone in the first place? Why not simply put an arrow through him from behind a tree?

The forester's shelter had three sides of stone, the front open to a firepit ringed with stones. Tethered beside it were two horses, a brown and a gray; a small fire crackled in the firepit, and something was cooking that sent a wave of hunger through Gird's belly.

Duke Marrakai was an older version of his son: heavy black hair and beard, green eyes, and a powerful body. Gird was aware that the two of them, father and son, could easily kill him if that was what they had in mind. But so far neither made a move against him. The duke was himself stirring a pot of some dark liquid, and Mesha moved quickly to unpack saddlebags: bread, cheese, onion, apples, slabs of meat. Gird unslung his own thin pack, and put his remaining loaf of bread with the other. Mesha looked startled, but his father nodded approval.

"We thank you, Gird, for sharing." His voice was deep, and Gird had no doubt its bellow would carry across a battle. "Mesha, show Gird the spring."

The spring came up beside a flat rock. Gird knelt and held his hand over it; the surface rippled a little with the flow. He muttered the greeting for its guardian spirit, and looked up to find the kirgan watching him curiously. "You don't speak to it?" he asked. Mesha shook his head. Gird looked back at the spring; surely it was glad to be recognized. He bent and scooped up a handful of icy, clean-tasting water. It made Gird's teeth ache. He filled his waterskin after Mesha drank.

"Do all your people talk to springs?" asked Mesha. Gird retied the thong that held the skin closed for travel.

"Whenever we take water from the earth, we thank the Lady, and the guardians. It's only courteous."

"Even from a well?"

"Of course." Gird looked at him. "If you give something to someone, don't you expect thanks? We cannot live without water, without the rain falling and the springs rising."

"Yes, but—is that why peasants—why your people—tie flowers and wool to the wellposts?"

"Yes, and if this were a spring on my land, I would bring gifts at Midwinter and Midsummer. Perhaps someone else does that here."

Mesha looked as if he would ask more, but didn't. Instead he waved at the clearing behind the shelter. "Over there, behind that cedar, is the jacks for this shelter. 'Tis far enough from the water, my father says." Gird had no need then, but wondered how long they thought he would stay.

They came back to find Duke Marrakai pouring the dark liquid into thick-walled mugs. "Do you have sib, in your country?" he asked Gird. Gird nodded. "Good. I like it with more tikaroot than most, though that makes it more bitter; this has honey in it."