The Legacy of Gird (70 page)

He was, as he had never expected to be, alive and a hero. Everyone knew the big blocky man in blue (it seemed simpler to keep wearing that color; when he didn't, someone would give him a blue shirt "to remember by") on the stocky gray—almost white now—horse. Children ran out to meet him on the way, calling to him, running beside the horse. If his route was known, there would be bits of blue tied to branches, blue yarn braided into women's hair, blue flowers, in season, thrown before him. If he surprised a village, they would drop their tools and gather, beg for his blessing, bring all their problems for him to solve.

He found that they wanted him—his physical touch, his presence, his listening ear—far more than they wanted his ideas. They had each their local heroes—someone who had fought with him at Grahlin or Greenfields, Blackbone Hill or Brightwater. Every little ambush, each battle, had its heroes, and they had all gone home, if they lived, to tell the tale their own way. Gird heard with some astonishment that he had thrown a horse and rider "so far the crash was not heard when they landed" in one battle, and someone who had lost a leg and survived (Gird remembered the man clinging to his hand, begging for death) came hopping up without it to hug Gird and pound his back and show off his children.

But when he tried to speak to them of the future, only a few paid heed. The others were busy with their work, with lives deferred. They had won, and life was good; they feared nothing but the lords' return, and needed nothing but Gird's friendship.

Some were interested in the legal reforms he instituted. Merchants, craftsmen, and even a few former farmers—but their interest in abstract justice and perfect fairness gave way to factional argument far more often than Gird had hoped. Eventually, after hours and days and even seasons of wrangling, one group would agree on a particular rule, only to have those who had not attended the original conference refuse to follow it. Then everyone appealed to Gird, and he found himself making the very judgments he had called on others to make.

Most folk understood the need to have some armed force for protection, both locally, against brigands, and regionally, in case of invasion. But fewer wanted to support the barton and grange organization Gird envisioned, with adequate, uniform training for yeomen, yeoman-marshals, marshals, with regular drill for all yeomen even in times of peace.

He was troubled, as well, by the feeling that he had had since surviving the battle at Greenfields. He had been told that he could not see the peace he would bring, and here it was, all around him. Either the gods were wrong—and he could not believe that—or he had misunderstood. He didn't believe that, either. Which meant that the peace he saw was somehow not real. Something was wrong with it, as something had been wrong after Norwalk Sheepfolds. He had asked then if it was his fault that he would not see true peace, and had had no answer. He asked himself the same question now: was the wrong here his fault? Had he failed in something he should have done, that would have brought true and lasting peace—had he withheld something he should have given?

His own memories reminded him of his mistakes; the victories others boasted of in his name seemed to him full of his miscalculations, deaths he'd caused by his stupidity or carelessness. That one fit of drunkenness, which left a legacy still; even now, even when everyone called him Father Gird, someone would take the mug from his hand with a kindly smile, when he'd had what they thought was enough. He had done what he set out to do—free the land of its bad rulers—but every time his gray horse ticked a hoof on a skull, or he saw the white end of a bone turned up as someone plowed a field, he shuddered.

He traveled widely, urged on by that vague but persistent uneasiness. Everywhere he went he seemed to see prosperity returning, as farms returned to burnt-over fields, as once-deserted villages hummed with life. His people had more flesh on their bones; foreign traders complained of their scant profits, but kept returning. So did wealthy craftsmen who had thought a peasant kingdom would have no need of their abilities. His new coinage, which the magelady had so complained about, circulated more freely than the old ever had. When Luap first mentioned what he saw as the problem, the continuing bitterness between former magelord landholders and tenants, Gird scoffed at him.

"They won't hurt children," he said. "The adults, maybe, but—"

"I've talked with Autumn Rose." Luap said the name without embarrassment; Gird still thought it was silly. If she wanted to conceal her real name, she could have taken any simple one. She had changed, over the years, but she still had what he thought of as lordly arrogance. He let himself remember the first time she had laughed at herself, admitted that she could be as ridiculous as anyone. Was it then that she began to change, to give up her old grievance against the dead king. She had made, as Arranha had predicted, a good marshal when she finally quit dramatizing her lost love. He realized his mind had wandered, as it did more often now, and came back to find that Luap was watching him, patiently. Luap went on. "She thinks it will get worse. There are too many of the halfbred children, and sometimes the power sleeps a generation or so, cropping out unexpectedly. Besides, you said not all the adults were guilty, that if they wanted to live under your laws they would be safe."

"So I did, and so they are." He hated it when Luap was patient with him, as if he were a doddering old man; it made him grumpy.

Luap shook his head. "If they come so far as your courts, they are. Many don't. There was a man killed in the south, near Kelaive's old domain—" The regions had not been renamed; Gird decided they needed to do that next. The very name Kelaive wakened old angers. "—a younger son, he could make light with his finger, enough to light a candle. Stoned, Gird, and no one will admit to having anything to do with it. You can lose your temper and stab someone in a rage, or bash his head with one rock, but stoning—that takes time, and many people."

"What did they say he'd done?" He must have done something, to arouse that kind of anger.

"They don't say, because no one admits to doing it. Cob's your high marshal down there; you know he's sensible." He had always liked Cob, whose blunt, matter-of-fact approach to life had not changed through war or peace. He still limped, from the foot broken outside Grahlin, but never complained.

"What does Cob say?"

Luap pulled out the message and read it aloud. "Tell Gird he must do something, perhaps send the mages away."

"Away
where?
Where would people trust me to send them? Those here don't want to live in Tsaia, won't go back to Aarenis—and they say there's nothing left in Old Aare. Besides, if I send them away, that kind of folk will worry that they're plotting together. I hear enough of that on the east side now, worrying that Tsaia will invade. It'll wear itself out, in time; what takes years to grow can't wither in a moment."

He went back to the maps, determined to eliminate Kelaive's name before the day was out. The old names, the folk names, belonged: Burry and Berryhedge (four families lived there now, in the ruins) and Three Springs. Get rid of the lords' newfangled names; he would agree that some of their family members were innocent, but no need to honor a bad name by putting it on a map. He was uneasily aware that some bartons had indulged in more looting and destruction than he would have approved if he'd been there, but he was sure—he hoped he was sure—that that had been a single overreaction to years of oppression.

Another year went by, and another. He put on weight; his old belt gave way one day in the middle of a court session, to everyone's delight. Someone ran to bring him a strip of blue leather; he insisted on paying for it (he was, after all, sitting as judge) and wore it thereafter. He still rode out from the city that had been Finyatha and was now Fin Panir, visiting villages and towns, following that old restlessness. He had to admit that Luap was right in one thing; it was taking much longer than he'd expected to reconcile the common folk to the continued presence of surviving magelords and their children. It would come, he was sure of it: at some point they would recognize what they lost in this continual picking at the past. Mali had told him that, all those long years ago, when he had held a grudge against Teris: all life soured if you held anger.

He was working by an open window one hot afternoon when he saw the furtive movement of those who know they're about to do wrong. One, then another, slipped past beneath him, heading around the corner toward whatever lured them on. He was not really curious; it was too hot, and his feet hurt even in slippers. Then he heard children's shrill voices, and someone yelled "I'll tell Gird!" in the very tone in which one wrongdoer informs on another. Sighing, he pushed himself away from his desk, put his feet into his largest pair of boots, and was downstairs when the threatened information arrived. "Something" was going on "down the market way" that he wouldn't like. The marshal, the barefoot child informed him "made no good of it." Then the child was gone, with a flick of a smile that could mean anything from "I started it" to "I know you'll fix it." Both could be true.

He followed the furtiveness he'd observed before, and saw more hurrying backs. Odd that someone's back could reveal intent, he thought. As much as a face, perhaps more. Then he saw a crowd, in the lower market, where the livestock pens were. At the moment, their backs had the look of guilty curiosity.

He felt the crowd's mood shift even before the growling mutter began.
Not again,
he thought. Couldn't the fools understand? Why did they start this nonsense again, now, when all was won, and only ruin could follow such anger?

Those at the back of the crowd moved instinctively away from his determined stride, even before they recognized him. Their voices followed, then raced ahead: "Gird—it's Gird—
he's
coming—" A lane opened for him, leading him toward the trouble.

There was Luap, as he had expected, and the Autumn Rose. She held the shoulders of a whip-thin, dark-haired lad whose face was a mass of bruises and scrapes, eyes barely visible in the mess. Blood dribbled from his broken nose and split lip. Gird could see the lad shaking, and no wonder. Across from them was a yeoman of the local grange, Parik, sucking raw knuckles. When he saw Gird, he glowered, no whit repentant.

Luap, uncharacteristically, said nothing. The Autumn Rose looked past Gird's ear, an insult he would have thought but for the warning that leapt into her eyes. So. He looked back at Parik, seeing in Parik's eyes the confidence that came from knowing he was not alone in this.

"Well?" Gird's voice cracked, as it had been doing since Midwinter Feast and that disastrous dance in the snow. He swallowed the lump and awaited an answer.

"That'n used magicks," said Parik, in a tone well-calculated to sting without justifying rebuke. He merely looked at the lad, and then gave a final lick to his own knuckles.

"You're accusing him of misusing magicks?" asked Gird mildly.

"Nah—they all seen it. He's a magelord's brat, should never have lived this long, and needs mannering, if he's to live any longer." Parik made a show of patting his tunic back into place.

"And you thought it your job—?"

"He put fire on me," said Parik, as if explaining something difficult to a dull child. "He put fire on me, so I put m'fist on him. Like you says, Gird, or
used
to say, simple means for simple minds." He laughed, a little too loudly, and Gird heard nervous sniggers elsewhere.

He closed his eyes, suddenly so tired he felt he must sink to the ground. He had told them, and told them, and explained, and argued, and shouted, and broken their stubborn heads from time to time, and even, when his breath ran out, spoken softly, and here they were, just as bad as ever. Just as bad as the magelords, barring they used fists instead of magic.
Gods
—! he thought, then stuffed the prayer back. Ask their help and get their interference, like as not. He opened his eyes to find everyone staring at him. Give them an answer, a judgment: he had to, and he could not.

"The Marshal?" he asked. His voice was unsteady; he could see their reaction to that, like a child's to a parent weeping.

"Don't need no Marshal to know right from wrong," said Parik, bolder now that Gird had not unleashed his usual bellow. "S'what you taught us, after all: don't need no priests, no crooked judges, no lords—and 'specially no magelords—"

Gird looked at Luap: Luap white-faced, gaze honed to a steel blade that sliced into Gird's mind. Luap, who had warned of this, whose warning he had ignored, thinking it special pleading. It was to Luap he spoke, in a conversational tone that confused the others.

"You were right, and I was wrong. Are you still of the same mind?"

Luap's face flooded with color: surprise. "I—yes, Gird."

"They are not
all
Parik." And that was special pleading,
his
special pleading. Luap nodded, taking it seriously. He had not hoped for so much compassion.

"Talk to
me!
" yelled Parik. Gird watched the Autumn Rose transfer her gaze to him, as deliberate as someone shifting a lance; Parik paled, but did not retreat. "Is that it, then? Are you hiding behind your pet magelords, using their power to charm us?"

"WHAT!" That time he had the old strength in it, and Parik backed up a step. Fury lifted Gird to his full height, pumped power into the fists clenched at his sides, as he stalked towards Parik, stiff-legged. "I never hide; I never did. There are no magelords, Parik, because
I
led you and the others to fight free of them. Mages, yes, and some mere children, like this lad here—but no magelords. No, Parik."

Parik backed up another step, blustering. "But—but that lady there—she looked at me—"

"I'm looking at you, Parik, and seeing a bully who'd be a lord as bad as ever we fought, had he the power."

"Me? But I just—"

"You just beat a lad half your size, for using magicks you said, but you brought no accusation to the Marshal—"

"Donag, he don't want to be bothered with little stuff like that—"