The Legacy of Gird (52 page)

Gird sighed, heavily, and said, "Well, you may be right. Times before, I drank too much, and I thought I had my reasons."

"Most men have," said Adar, "At least they say so."

"Yes. Well, I can't stop last night now—"

She cocked her head at him. "No—and you can't stop the results of it, either."

He had not thought Adar was so forthcoming. She'd been a quiet one, hardly speaking in drill, always busy at some task but never chattering with the other women.
You said women had brains too,
he reminded himself.
You said men should listen to them.
But it was different, Rahi or Pir and this stranger. He wasn't going to justify himself to her, and he wasn't going to make promises, either. He climbed the bank, regaining the advantage of height, and looked down at her.

"I'll have to try," he said. Then he went on, to hunt for at least one of his cohort marshals.

Kef caught him halfway across the camp, by which time Gird was sure that the problem was much bigger than he'd thought. All the firepits were cold, when someone should have been brewing sib and baking for the noon meal. Those few he could see all looked to be tying up bundles.

"Gird! Red Seli wants to see you." Kef was breathless; he must have run some way. "Back there," he said, waving an arm to answer Gird's unasked question. "In the woods near the spring."

"Where are the other marshals?" asked Gird. Already he knew they might have deserted.

"Ivis took his cohort up the river, to gather fuel; Sim's looking for a better campsite—"

"Better than this?" Gird looked at the clean-running creek, and the heavy woods around that hid them from almost all directions. And they had watchers on the high rocks, the only point that overlooked the camp.

Kef looked down. "They're afraid Binis will tell," he said. "Or those new ones."

"So they all decided to move while I slept."

"They tried to wake you, but—" Kefs voice trailed off. Gird's headache was no worse than the pain in his heart.
He
had told them the importance of a leader's ability to stay alert, to wake quickly and able to deal with emergencies. He had shown them—and would they distrust him now, because only once he drank too much ale? Could he not have
any
relaxation?

He remembered the gnomes suddenly, their stern faces and inflexible rules. Their warmaster would have had something to say about "relaxation," and not what he would like to hear.

"What did I say to Binis?" he asked Kef.

"You don't remember?"

"If I remembered, I wouldn't need to ask you, now would I? Tell me."

Kef looked down, scuffed his toes in the leafmold, and then stared past Gird's shoulder. "You said—you said you didn't care what the steward had done, that the yeoman-marshal had a right to run his barton any way he pleased, and if he didn't want a gaggle of whining women treating war like a village brawl over oven-rights that was fine with you, and if she didn't have a better reason than that for joining up, she'd never last a day of camp discipline—that you had enough half-witted, lovesick wenches hanging around already, bothering your soldiers with nonsensical notions—that for all you cared she could take her ugly face to the duke and see what good it did her—"

"I said
that?
"

Kef nodded. "More than that—and livelier than that, if you take my meaning. You brought up every god I heard of, and a few I haven't, and threatened to unbreech her in front of the whole camp and tan her backside."

"Oh gods." His heart sank. He had never suspected himself of that kind of thing. He thought Binis was ugly, and just the sort of woman he disliked, but that was no excuse for what he'd said.

"That's when Rahi tried to get you to be quiet—"

"Rahi—!"

"And you told her to shut her damnfool mouth or you'd show her you were still her father—?"

"Mmph." Humor pricked his misery. "I daresay she didn't take that well."

"No—she said ale was no one's father, and stormed off—that's when Binis left. And the others."

Gird scrubbed his head with both hands. Worse than he'd thought. Worse then he'd ever imagined—how could he have
done
such a thing? He could see, with the clear vision of the morning after, just how that would affect all the women. He had had no problems with them before; they had done all he asked of any soldier, and now—he shivered. "Where's Rahi?"

Kef was staring at the ground again. "Gone. She went off with Sim. I—I think she'll be back."

At least his son had been far away, off scouting with a small group in the west. Maybe he could get this straightened out before Pidi came back. He had the feeling it was going to take a long time, and a good bit of unpleasantness.

"Well. Thank you for telling me." That surprised Kef; he had expected anger, Gird could see. "I needed to know what had set everyone off. Now I do, and I'm not surprised."

"You're not?"

Gird shook his head. "No—why would I be? I didn't know what I was saying, Kef—you don't have to believe that, but I didn't. That's not an excuse; I've told you all that, and it has to apply to me, too. I was wrong to get drunk, wrong to say all that to Binis—"

Kef scuffed the ground again. "That yeoman-marshal, he did say as how she's hard to live with—always picking quarrels, complaining—that's why he didn't welcome her—"

"That's as may be." Gird took a deep breath, and it out in a long sigh. His head still hurt, but he could see, between the waves of pain, what he should have done, and would have to do now. "I was still wrong, and I can't afford to be wrong like that. Red Selis first, and then I'll find the other marshals: we need to have a conference."

Red Selis, who had taken over Felis's unit after the guardhouse defeat, was so relieved to find Gird sober, cooperative, and reasonable that he looked almost foolish. Gird did his best to project calm confidence. They discussed the transport of water to an alternate campsite, if one were found, and the possible storage of some equipment near the spring in case they came back to this site later. When all this was settled, Gird looked Red Seli straight in the face.

"I played the fool last night, and you have cause to mistrust me—what about it?"

Red Selis' face turned redder than his hair. "Well, I—I was going to say, sir—since you mentioned it first—it's not that we don't trust you—"

Gird resisted the temptation to shake him. "Of course you don't, right now: what I'm asking is, do you want to quit? Go home?"

"Quit!" Startled, Red Selis stared slack-jawed a moment, then shook his head. "No, 'course not. Just for one bit of temper? It's just that—I dunno, exactly, but—"

"If I'd done that in the midst of battle, it could've killed us all," Gird said harshly. "If someone else had, I'd be ready to break his neck for him—might even try. It's worse for me—I'm supposed to be showing you how. Tell you what, I never knew it to take me like that before—not that I recall. It won't do: you know it, and I know it. That's well and good: no more of it for me. But to mend last night's bad work—I have to know if you'll trust me on this, long enough to see that I mean it."

"Well—yes." Red Selis looked thoughtful. "I never—I mean I thought you'd be angry, like, that we'd seen you—"

"I am angry, but with myself. It's not your fault."

" 'Twas
my
cousin made the brew—" muttered Red Selis. Gird had forgotten that.

"It's not his fault either. You've heard me say it to others: the rule's the same for all. I was flat stupid, that's what it is, and it won't happen again." As he said that, he wondered—how was he going to tell when he'd had too much? Surely it wouldn't mean giving up ale altogether? He could see sidelong looks from those of Red Selis's cohort who were close enough to hear. At least they were there, and not on their way home.

By nightfall, Gird had visited each of his marshals. Sim had not found a really good campsite; the army was dispersed among several temporary sites, and, to Gird's eye, had lost perhaps one in seven. He didn't do a formal count, and no one told him. Gird had not seen Rahi all day; he had not wanted to ask Sim about her. He had asked the marshals to gather everyone briefly, and in the dusky forest light of early evening he faced his army in a clearing not big enough for them all. He could feel hostility, fear, and even more dangerous, detachment—too many of them had decided they didn't care what he did.

"How many of you," he began, "saw what happened last night?" Arms waved, and a general growl of assent. "And how many of you saw it coming? How many noticed I was drunk before that?" Fewer arms, and a subdued mutter. Finally one clear voice from behind a screen of trees.

"I seen it days ago, the way you started goin' to the ale-pot every night. Said to my brother, you just watch, and he'll go the way of our uncle Berro, see if he don't, and you did." That brought a scatter of chuckles, but some nodding heads.

"Well," Gird said, "you were right. I just hope your uncle Berro never made such a fool of himself, and never said so much he wished he hadn't said."

"I always heard as how drunks say what they really mean," said someone else, challenging. A woman's voice. Gird had expected that.

"My Da said, the first time he found me drunk, that a drunk's mind was two years behind him, at least." He paused, looked around, and felt a flicker of interest from them. "If you'd asked me, back when I had a home and a wife and children, if I thought women could make soldiers, I'd have said no. I'd never seen one, and neither had any of the rest of you. When Rahi came, my own daughter, I doubted her at first. But she had nowhere to go, and I knew my own blood was in her."

"And you told her—"

"Aye. Drunk, which I shouldn't have been, I told her a bunch of nonsense. Maybe I do think that, down in the old part of me, in my past. But here and now, I mean what I've said afore about women. You know what that is, and how I've made the rules here. And kept them, until now. I let my own daughter—and you that have daughters know what that costs—choose to put her body in front of pikes and swords. I meant all I said, and my pledge is still that what laws we make afterwards will be fair to women as to men."

"Fine, then, when you're sober—but what if you're pickled in ale when you write the laws?"

"I won't be." He waited a moment, to see how they'd take that, and was surprised at the change in the atmosphere. Most of them were listening, were believing him. The others were uncertain now, no longer detached or hostile.

"I may be pigheaded, but I'm not that stupid: I made a mistake, a big one, and it's cost all of us, not just me. I'm not going to do it again."

"Going to let someone tell you to quit?" asked the same woman's voice. Gird had not thought farther than keeping away from ale altogether.

"Good idea," he said, surprising her. "Who would you trust?" A long pause was followed by several muttered suggestions, mostly marshals. The woman spoke up again.

"Rahi?"

"Tell you what," Gird said. "I'll talk to Rahi, Cob, those others you mentioned—and as far as the ale goes, they can tell me what they think. Is that fair?"

This time almost all of them agreed. "But what about Binis?" asked another woman. Gird nodded, and waved quiet those who tried to hush her.

"She's right. What I do from now on is one thing, but what I did to Binis and those others is another—something I have to deal with. What I thought is I'd go after her, find her. Apologize—"

"No! She'll turn you in."

Gird shrugged. "If she does, it's better than her setting the sier on all of you."

But this provoked more discussion and argument. Gird waited it out. Finally, Red Selis seemed to speak for most when he said, "It's already happened; if she's gone to the sier, then she's gone—we don't want to lose you as well. If she comes back, you can apologize then."

"She won't be back," said someone else. "But the redhead has the right of it. You're no good to us dead or captured."

"I should tell her—" Gird began, when a voice behind him spoke out.

"Tell her what?" It was Rahi; he turned to see her standing there as if she'd never been anywhere else.

"I'll tell
you
I'm sorry," he said. "About last night—I didn't know how drunk I was."

"Very," she said. Her mouth quirked. "More than I ever remember. I hope you learned something from it."

"I did. And I was going to find Binis, and tell her—"

Rahi shook her head before he finished. "Best not. I've got her settled for now, best I could do."

"What?"

"Where did you think I'd gone off to? Someone had to be sure she didn't put the sier's men on us right away. I let her have her say—and she's got a tongue on her almost as bad as yours, when she's roused—and finally convinced her she wouldn't get any profit out of the steward, besides it not being everyone's fault. But she hates you still, and she'd be glad to do you an injury if she could. You can't mend it; best end it."

The meeting broke up into clumps of people talking, a few arguing, some coming to Gird to thank him for speaking, some edging around him. He spoke to all who approached him, feeling Rahi's attention at his back like a warm fire. Finally everyone wandered off into the gloom, and she came up beside him.

"You were stupid," she said quietly. He heard the steel underneath.

"I was. I don't know—"

"Mother said when you were young you drank like that sometimes. Came home ready to fight anyone."

"I don't remember—before I met her, yes, but after—"

"Only a few times, she said, but when she was dying she bade me watch for it. Help you if I could."

"You helped me here. I'm sorry, Rahi." He would have hugged her, but she stood just too far away, his daughter no longer, making sure he knew it. That, too, pierced his heart with a pain as great as all the rest.

She heaved a sigh much like his, and her hands turned, gesturing futility. "I don't think you can understand what your ways have meant to women—beyond what you saw in it." He raised his brows, inviting her to speak, but she shook her head. "You can't understand; you've never been where we were. But don't take it back, whatever you do. Not for me or for any of us. You'll lose—lose more than soldiers from your army, if you do."