"Your name, boy? Your father?"
"Gird, sir. Dorthan's son."
"Dorthan, eh? Your father's not a brawling man; I'd have thought better of his sons."
"Sir, he stole my plums!"
"Your tribute . . . yes. What was it, this year?"
"A ruckbasket, sir. And they were fine plums, big dark ones, and he—"
"Who?"
Gird nodded at Rauf. "Rauf, sir. Him and Sikan, his friend."
"Anyone else see that?" The steward's gaze drifted over the crowd of boys. Most stared at their feet, but Teris, a year older than Gird and son of his nearest neighbor, nodded.
"If you please, sir, it was Rauf started it. He said they were good plums, and would look better in his basket. Then he took some, and Gird said no, and he knocked Gird aside—"
"Rauf struck the first blow?"
"Aye, sir."
"Anyone else?" Reluctant nods followed this. Gird saw a space open around Sikan, who had edged to the rear of the group. Sikan flushed and moved forward when the steward stared hard at him.
"It wasn't so bad, sir," he said, trying to smile around a bruised lip. "We was just teasing the lad, like, that was all."
"Teasing, in your lord's court?"
"Well—"
"And did you hit this boy?" The steward pointed at Gird.
"Well, sir, I may have—sort of—sort of pushed at him, like, but nothing hard, not to say brawling. But he's one of them, you know, likes to make quarrels—"
The steward frowned. "It's not the first time, Sikan, that you and Rauf have been found in bad order." He nodded at the men behind Gird, and they released his arms. Gird rubbed his left elbow. "As for you, Gird son of Dorthan, brawling in the lord's court is always wrong—always. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir." There was nothing else to say.
"And you're at fault in saying that
your
plums were stolen. They were your lord's plums, owed to him. If Rauf had given them in, the lord would still have them. Instead—" The steward waved his hand at the mess. Very few whole fruit had survived the brawl. "But your family has a good name, young Gird, and I think you did not mean to cause trouble. So there will be no fine in fruit for your family . . . only you, along with these others, will stay and clean the court until those stones are clean enough to satisfy Sergeant Mager here."
"Yes, sir." And he would be late home, and get another whipping from his father.
"Now as for you, Sikan, and Rauf—" For Rauf had begun to move about, and his eyes opened, though aimlessly as yet. "Since you started trouble, and moreover chose a smaller boy to bully, you'll spend a night in the stocks, when this work is done." And the steward turned away, back to his canopy over the account table where the scribes made marks on long rolls of parchment.
Gird found the rest of that day instructive. He had scrubbed their stone floor often enough at home, and scraped dung from the cowshed. But his mother was no more particular about the bowls they ate from than Sergeant Mager about the courtyard stones. He and the other boys picked up pieces of the squashed fruit and put them in baskets—without getting even a taste of it. Then they carried buckets of water—buckets so large that Gird couldn't carry one by himself—and brushed the stones with water and long-handled brushes. Then they rinsed, and then they scrubbed again. Just when Gird was sure that the stones could be no cleaner had they just been quarried, the Sergeant would find a scrap of fruit rind, and they had it all to do over again. But he did his best, working as hard as he could. By the time the Sergeant let them go, it was well past midday, and Gird's fingers were raw with scrubbing. He called Gird back from the gate for an extra word.
"Your dad's got a good name," he said, laying a heavy hand on Gird's shoulder. "And you're a good lad, if quick-tempered. You've got courage, too—you were willing to take on those bigger lads. Ever think of being a soldier?"
Gird felt his heart leap. "You mean . . . like you?"
The sergeant laughed. "Not at first, of course. You'd start like the others, as a recruit. But you're big for your age, and strong. You work hard. Think of it . . . a sword, a spear maybe . . . you could make sergeant someday."
"Do you ever get to ride a horse?" That was his dream, to ride a fast horse as the lords did, running before the wind.
"Sometimes." The sergeant smiled. "The steward might recommend you for training. A lad like you needs the discipline, needs a place to work off his extra energy. Besides, it's a mouth less to feed at home." He gave Gird's shoulder a final shake, and pushed him out the gate. "We'll have a word with your dad, this next day or so. Don't start trouble again, eh?"
"Holy Lady of Flowers!" His mother had been half-way down the lane; she must have been watching from the house. "Gird, what did you mean—"
"I'm sorry." He stared at the dust between his toes, aware of every rip in his clothes. They had been his best, the shirt actually new, and now they looked like his ragged old ones. "I didn't start it, Mother, truly I didn't. Rauf stole some plums, and I thought we might have a fine—"
"Effa says Rauf hit you first."
"Yes'm." He heard her sigh, and looked up. "I really didn't—"
"Gird—" She put a hand on his head. "At least you're back, and no fine. Effa says the steward didn't seem angry, not like she thought he would be."
"I don't think he is." Suddenly his news burst out of him. "Guess what the sergeant said—maybe I can train to be a soldier! I could have a sword—" Excited as he was, he didn't notice her withdrawal, the shock on her face. "Sometimes they even ride horses, he said. He said I was big enough, and strong, and—" Her stiff silence held him at last; he stared at her. "Mother?"
"No!" She caught his arm, and half-dragged him down the lane to the house.
The argument went on all evening. His father's first reaction to the story of the plums was to reach for his belt. "I don't brawl," he said. "And I didn't raise my sons to be brawlers."
Arin, as usual, stood up for him. "Da, that Rauf's a bad lot, you know that. So's the steward: they've got him in stocks this night, and Sikan too."
"And I'll have their fathers down on me, did you think of that? Oreg's no man to blame his own son, even if Rauf tells the tale aright. If Gird hadn't fought back, Oreg would've known he owed me sommat, a bit of bacon even. And Sikan's father—I want no quarrel with him; his wife has the only parrion for dyecraft in this village. As for this way—it's no good. We can't be fighting each other; the world's hard enough without that. They'll have to know I punished Gird, and I'll have to go to them and apologize."
So it was a whipping on top of his bruises, and no supper as well as no lunch. Gird had expected as much; he saw from Arin's wink that he would have a scrap to eat later, whatever Arin could sneak to him without being caught. But his father was as unhappy as his mother to hear of the sergeant's offer of training.
"It's never good to come into notice like that. Besides, we follow the Lady: would you take sword against your own folk, Gird? Break the village peace in blood and iron?" But before he could decide whether it was safe to answer—the answer he'd thought of, while waiting for his father to come from the fields—his father shrugged. "But if the steward comes, what can I say? They have the right to take you, no matter what I think about it. The best I can hope for is that the steward forgets it."
The steward did not forget. Gird spent the next day wrestling with the family's smallest scythe—still too long for him—mowing his father's section of the meadow. He knew he'd been sent there to get him out of sight, away from the other village boys. He knew his mother had baked two sweet cakes for Rauf's family and Sikan's, and his father had taken them over in the early morning. It was hot, the steamy heat of full summer, and the cold porridge of his breakfast had not filled the hollows from yesterday's fast. But above him, in the great field, his father was working, able to see if he shirked.
He kept at it doggedly, hacking uneven chunks where his brother could lay a clean swathe. There had to be a way. He paused to rub the great curved blade with the bit of stone his father had given him, and listened to the change in sound it made on different parts of the blade. When he looked sideways up the slope to the arable, he saw his father talking to another of the village men. Gird leaned on the scythe handle, the blade angled high above him, and picked a bur from between his toes.
When he looked again, his father had started back up the arable. Gird dared not move out of the sun to rest, but he tipped his head back to get the breeze. Something rustled in the tall grass ahead of him. Rat? Bird? He scratched the back of one leg with the other foot, glanced upslope again, and sighed. Someday he would be a man, and if he wasn't a soldier, he'd be a farmer, and able to swing a bigger scythe than this one. Like his father, whose sweeping strokes led the reapers each year. Like his brother Arin, who had just grown out of this scythe. He grunted at himself, and let the long blade down. Surely he could find a way to make this work better.
By nightfall, with all his blisters, he had begun to mow a level swathe. He'd changed the handles slightly, learned to get his hip into the swing, learned to take steps just the right length to compensate for the blade's arc. The next day, he spent on the same patch of meadow. Now that he had the knack of it, he was half-hoping the steward would not come. He would grow up a farmer like his father, leading the reapers in the field, guiding his own oxen, growing even better fruit. . .
It was the next day that the steward came at dusk, when his father had come in from the fields, and Gird had begun to feel himself out of disgrace as far as the family went. The children were sent to the barton out back, while the steward talked, and his father (he was sure) listened. He wanted to creep into the cowbyre and hear for himself, but Arin barred the way. He had to wait until his father called him in.
There in the candlelight, his father's face looked older, tireder. His mother sat stiffly, lips pressed together, behind her loom. The steward smiled at him. "Gird, the sergeant suggested that you were a likely lad to train for soldier: strong and brave, and in need of discipline. Your father will let you choose for yourself. If you agree, you will spend one day of ten with the soldiers this year, and from Midwinter to Midwinter next, two days of ten. It's not soldiering at first, I'll be honest with you: you'll work in the barracks just as you'd work here. But your father'd be paid the worth of your work, a copper crab more than for fieldwork. And the following year, you'd be a recruit, learning warcraft, and your father will get both coppers and a dole off his fee. 'Twould help your family, in hard times, but your father says you must do as you wish."
It was frightening to see his parents so still, so clearly frightened themselves. He had never really understood them before, he felt. Behind him, in the doorway, Arin and the others crowded; he could hear their noisy breathing. Could soldiering be so bad as they thought? All his life he'd seen the guardsmen strolling the village lane, admired the glitter of their buckles, the jingle of their harness. He'd been too young to fear the ordersticks, the clubs . . . he'd had strong hands rumpling his hair, when he crowded near with the other boys, he'd had a smile from the sergeant himself. And the soldiers fought off brigands, and hunted wolves and folokai; he remembered only last winter, cheering in the snow with the others as they carried back the dead folokai tied to poles. One of them had been hurt, his blood staining the orange tunic he wore, but the world was hard, and there were many ways to be hurt.
He wanted to stand on one leg and think about it, but there stood the steward, peering at him in the dimness with eyes that seemed to see clear into his heart. He'd never spoken to a lord before, exactly. Was the steward a lord? Close enough.
"It would not be a binding oath," the steward said, a little impatiently. Gird knew that tone; his father had it when he asked who had left the barton wicket open. It meant a quick answer, or trouble. "If you did not like it, you could quit before you started the real training . . ."
Gird ducked his head, and then looked up at the steward. From one corner of his vision he could see his father's rigid face, but he ignored it.
"Sir . . . steward . . . I would be glad to. If my father allows."
"He has said it." The steward smiled, then. "Dorthan, your son Gird is accepted into service of the Count Kelaive, and here is the
pirik
—" The bargain-sum, Gird remembered: not a price paid, as if he were a sheep, but a sum to mark the conclusion of any bargain. The price was somewhat else.
The very next morning, Gird left at dawn to walk through the village to the count's guards' barracks. None of his friends were out to watch him, but he knew they would be impressed. The guard at the gate admitted him, sent him straight across the forecourt to the barracks. The guards were just getting up, and the sergeant was crosser than Gird remembered.
"Get in the kitchen first, and serve the food; then you can clean for the cooks until after morning drill. I'll see you then. Hop, now."
The porridge was much like their own, if cooked in larger pots and served in bigger bowls. Gird carried the dirty bowls back, and scrubbed them, under the cook's critical eye, then scrubbed the big cookpots. Then it was chop the onions, while his eyes burned and watered, and chop the redroots until his hands were cramped, and then fetch buckets of clean water. All the while the cook scolded, worse than his oldest sister, while mixing and kneading the dough that would be dumplings in the midday stew. The sergeant came in while Gird was still washing down the long tables.
"Right, lad. Now let's see what we've got, here. Come along." He led Gird out the side door of the kitchen, into a back court, a little walled enclosure like a barton with no byres. In one corner was the kitchen well, with the row of buckets Gird had scrubbed neatly ranged along the wall.
The sergeant was just as impressive as ever, to Gird's eye: taller and broader than his own father, hard-muscled, with a brisk authority that expected absolute obedience. Gird looked at him, imagining himself grown into that size and strength, wearing those clean, whole, unmended clothes, having a place in the village and in his lord's service more secure than any farmer.