Allouene nodded. “Not as fast as among the serfs, nor as badly—they always had a steady stream of new blood trickling in from Terra, after all—but they did have occasional outbreaks. Far more often, it showed up among the gentry.”
“Gentry?” Ragnar asked. “Did they coerce some bourgeois into coming along, too?”
“No,” Allouene said. “They made them locally.” Ragnar shook his head, missing the reference. “Where did they come from?”
“Oh, Ragnar!” Lancorn snapped. “Don’t be any more dense than you have to be!”
Ragnar glowered at her. “Maybe I’m just too naïve. Spell it out for me, O wise one.”
“Well,” she answered, “what do you think is going to happen when a lord brings in a buxom serf wench to warm his bed?”
Ragnar froze.
“There will be a child who looks remarkably like that lord,” Siflot said softly.
Allouene nodded, her face hard. “Occasionally, a bastard might result from a lady’s inviting some strapping, handsome young serf in for the night, but far less frequently than the lords’ by-blows—it was a rare noblewoman who wanted to go through nine months of pregnancy ending in labor, for a peasant man. Far more often, the ladies, like the lords, only wanted pleasure, not more children. The lords could have used birth control medications of their own with their peasant wenches, of course, but they wanted to increase the population. Why not? The more there were, the more servants they had.”
“After all,” Magnus murmured, “a lord’s valet should be a gentleman, not a serf, should he not?” Allouene frowned, even as she nodded. “You sound as if you know, Gar. But you’re right—and the steward of the estate should be better-born than the average laborer, and there was a need for lawyers, and for clerks to handle the drudgery of the trickle of trade, and to oversee the building of new houses and the laying out of new gardens, and to act in the theaters…”
“So a class of petty aristocracy came into being,” Ragnar interpreted.
Allouene shook her head. “Gentry aren’t noble, Ragnar—the lords make a very big point of that. They’re a middle class, between the serfs and the nobility. In Europe, they came from the knights and the squires, and from the merchants; on Taxhaven, they’ve been given the same jobs, if not the titles. But they’ve developed their own pedigrees and mores anyway. They’ve never owned land legally, but when the same family of gentry has been in charge of the same hundred acres for three generations, it creates the illusion of ownership, and certainly a tie to the land. They’re allowed to earn money and save it in their own right, and are comfortably well-off, even sometimes wealthy in a small way. They resent their neglectful parent class, of course, but nonetheless, they side with the lords against the serfs, more or less automatically—they have something to lose, after all. Of course, there are always new gentlemen coming into being, not of the established families, and they’re scorned and looked down upon, and only allowed to marry one of the new gentlewomen—but their children are accepted, so the class keeps increasing in number. They’re the middle-rank officers in the army, the mid-level managers on the estates, the tax collectors and magistrates and squires. They’re resented by the serfs, and resent the lords in their own turn—but each class knows its place, and knows the painful, even lethal, penalties for stepping out of that place, so the society endures, though not happily.”
So they were bound for a planet governed by grown-up spoiled brats who intended to stay that way, lording it over a population of serfs dressed in medieval simplicity and filth, with an intermediary class of gentry to take care of the day-to-day administration and the direct contact with the serfs.
Magnus could see why Allouene had decided they needed changing.
CHAPTER 7
The freelance asked, “Can you move quietly, in the wood?”
Ian tried to smile. “I can try.”
“Well, then, let’s away.” The soldier turned to go, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “I cannot go on calling you ‘boy,’ ” he said. “It’s too clumsy. What’s your name?”
More danger—but Ian was in the thick of it now. He might as well pray for the best and tell the truth. “Ian,” he said. “Son of Tobin.”
“And I am Gar Pike.” The freelance smiled. “Well, then, Ian Tobinson—let’s away.”
They went onward under the trees, between the trunks, Gar as silent as the wind and almost as silent as the dwarves in his soft boots. Ian plucked up his courage and followed.
They threaded their way through the back trails, so faint that Ian could barely make them out. Every now and then, Gar would stop, cock his head, and listen. Then he would nod and lead Ian forth. Several times, though, when he stopped to listen, he turned quickly into the nearest thicket, parting the bushes before him and stepping into their center, holding the bushes back for Ian to follow, then pressing them back together and crouching down, motioning for Ian to do likewise and pressing a finger to his lips for silence. When this happened, Ian would do as Gar bade him and stay very still, breathing through his mouth. Then, after a while, he would hear the crashing and the crunching of the soldiers as they moved nearer. Several times they came almost to the thickets where Gar and Ian were hiding and Ian would hear them talking. They were afraid the lord would punish them for not having found the runaway youth. Each time this happened, Ian’s body knotted with fear. Not so much as he had felt before—he did not panic; Gar would protect him, he knew, if it came to a fight. Ian saw his own hands tighten on his quarterstaff, though, and remembered very well that Gar was, after all, only one man. If he had to fight trained soldiers, perhaps he would not be able to prevail. If that happened, Ian resolved to guard his back for him. Though he was only a boy against full-grown men, he knew his quarterstaff-play well, and might be able to delay a second soldier long enough for Gar to finish with the first.
They travelled through the forest all night in this fashion, and the near brushes with the soldiers became less frequent. But near dawn, when they were about to hide for the day, Gar suddenly turned aside from the trail. “Take cover, and quickly!”
Ian leaped after him, pushing through some underbrush into the center of a thicket. There they crouched on the bare earth, for all the world like deer. “Down,” Gar murmured, though he himself only sat, “and be very still.”
There was more tension in him than usual. Ian huddled under the leaves, wondering what was so much more dangerous this time.
Then he heard three voices. One of them was a cutting nasal whine—and Ian’s heart raced, for he recognized it. “If we do not find him, serfs, the hide on your back will be scored!”
“But, my lord…” The soldier sounded exhausted. “We have searched all night, we have searched all over the wood. Surely one of the other bands will have found him by now.”
“Impossible,” the other soldier snapped. Then, in a placating tone, “It is our duty to our Lord Murthren to search for the boy until we drop in our tracks, if need be.”
My lord Murthren! It was well the soldiers did not find them then, for Ian could not have moved a hand or a foot. He was frozen, frozen with fear.
Gar cocked his head to the side, listening, interested.
“Well said, though fawning,” the nasal voice sneered. “Now get on and do your job, and search for him!”
Ian trembled, recognizing Lord Murthren’s voice. The lord snapped, “You would be wiser to die searching for him, than to suffer my displeasure. He has violated one of the Sacred Places of the Old Ones! If we do not find and slay him, a curse, a murrain, shall fall upon all my land, my domains!”