Gar nodded. “Or mountains so high and rugged that any army going in will be cut down man by man before they can fight a pitched battle—or deserts or glaciers where a man who knows the territory can outlast any soldier. Yes, I daresay outlaw bands are inevitable indeed.”
“But having a leader like Lapin, who did what Lapin did, is anything but sure,” Dirk said somberly.
“Why, what did Lapin do?” Mama asked brightly.
Dirk glanced at Gar, who stood immobile a moment, then gave a cautious nod. Dirk sighed and turned back to Mama. “Lapin led her bandits in a revolt against the lords,” he said, “at the same time that a dozen other bands rose up.”
Dicea gasped; Coll stared, feeling the hair rise on the nape of his neck; and Mama quavered, “How slowly did she die?”
“Not at all,” Dirk answered. “In fact, she’s still alive, and doing quite well, thank you. She’s the head of all the rebels, and they’re the government of the plan … uh, kingdom, now.”
“But what of the lords?” Dicea asked, eyes round. “There were a few good ones,” Dirk admitted. “The rest are dead.”
Coll’s head swam with the audacity, the enormity of it! Serfs overthrow the lords? No, impossible! Surely impossible!
But if it weren’t …
“A deed of heroes!” Mama breathed, and Dicea echoed her. “Was this in an age of legend, sir?”
“Well, no, actually,” Dirk said, shifting uncomfortably. “It was six months ago. But far away, mind you! Very far away! And the rebels had a lot of help, from a wizard.”
“Two wizards,” Gar muttered, “one of whom was a legend.”
Dirk shot him a dark look. “But one of whom was very much alive.”
“Yes, he was, wasn’t he?” Gar stared straight at Dirk. “You aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Dirk said, his voice hollow.
“Oh, but I am,” Gar said softly.
7
Gar began work on Banhael during dinner that very night. The outlaws had roasted a deer, and everyone sat around the center of the encampment, sharing the meat and whatever roots, nuts, and berries the women had gathered.
“Are all your meals like this?” Gar asked. “The whole band eating together, I mean.”
“Dinner, yes,” Banhael grunted. “Otherwise, it’s up to each man to find what he can. Those with women fare better than single men.”
“Yes, women do seem to make life better, if they care enough to do more than warm a man’s bed,” Gar reflected. “In fact, I’m surprised to find your band so well established that you can have women.”
Banhael took the left-handed compliment with another grunt, but he puffed himself up a little. “We’re the largest band in the forest, sir knight, and we’re hidden deep, with sentries always on watch. Yes, my men can offer a woman safety, and some assurance of a good future.”
“Yes, as long as the game stays plentiful,” Gar mused, “and the other bands don’t join together against you.”
Banhael looked up, startled. “Why should they do that?”
“To make sure you won’t attack any one of them,” Gar returned. “That’s why you started building your band, wasn’t it?”
Banhael turned away to frown at the fire. “I suppose it was, now that you mention it—join up or die.’ ”
Gar nodded. “Very much the sort of thing, yes. After all, what’s the surest way to guarantee that someone else doesn’t attack you?”
“Attack him first,” Banhael grunted. “I guess it is pretty clear, isn’t it?”
“Paranoid, too,” Dirk muttered, but Gar went on easily. “Very clear. In fact, I suspect that’s how the first lords came to power.”
“The lords? Attack first? ‘Join or die’?” Banhael looked up in surprise, then turned thoughtful, nodding slowly. “Yes, that makes sense. I’d always thought they were born lords right from the first.”
“That’s what they want you to believe,” Dirk said with a cynical smile.
Gar nodded. “Every noble house began with a man who wasn’t born to power, but seized it by force of arms.”
“Well, I suppose knights should know.” Banhael still sounded doubtful.
“But not too well, you mean?” Gar gave him a sardonic smile. “If we really understood it, we would seize power for ourselves?”
“Of course, it could be that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Dirk pointed out, “only you’re seeing us when we’re just starting out.”
“And need a small army of your own to begin with, eh? Such as a band of outlaws in a forest? Do you think I’ve made myself a little army just so you can take it and use it?” Banhael demanded.
Gar nodded approval. “You do understand us, don’t you?”
Yes, Banhael understood them, Coll realized—as long as they led him to it, step by step.
“I’ve no lust for cleared lands and tilled fields,” Banhael snapped. “The greenwood is enough for me,”
“Yes, but how much of it?” Gar demanded.
There was a shout; they looked up as a drum began to beat, and one of the younger women began to move her feet in time to it. A young man stepped out to join her, then another, and older outlaws took up instruments, one a willow pipe, another a sort of fiddle.
“Enough of this talk of armies and lords.” Banhael turned to watch the dancers with glittering eyes. “Life is for pleasure.”
“True,” Gar agreed, “though sometimes you have to fight hard to have anything to enjoy.”
“Or work hard to gather or raise it,” Dirk pointed out. Coll felt a rush of gratitude—all this talk of armies and fighting was making him nervous. Hadn’t Gar and Dirk said that was what they wanted to stop?
They certainly seemed to have forgotten it for the time being. Gar was clapping his hands in time to the beat, and Dirk was stepping out to join the dancers. With a gleam in her eye, Dicea rose to join them, and the rest of the evening was spent in revelry—and, for Coll, in worry, for he knew his sister was doomed to disappointment—Dirk didn’t have the look of a man who was ready to settle down—not yet, nor for a long time to come. Neither did Gar, for that matter—and it did matter, since Coll had seen her eyeing the bigger knight, too. In fact, there was a quality of aloofness about Gar that belied the friendliness and occasional warmth of his words, a sense of standing back and watching the life that went on about him without really being part of it. Nonsense, of course, considering the number of fights Coll had seen Gar embroiled in, or the fact that he had led Dirk in rescuing Coll himself—or the battle they had just won, which Gar had virtually commanded. Yes, it was nonsense, but the feeling was there nonetheless.
Banhael brought up the issue himself over breakfast, or what passed for it—black bread and cheese, washed down with warm ale. “Look you,” he said truculently, “it’s plain flat impossible to fight the lords. I know, for two years ago, I gathered fifty men who were eager for revenge and came out of the woodland to seize a village. The lord led his knights and men-at-arms against us and killed half my men outright. The other half were lucky to escape to the greenwood, and it was two years and four victories over smaller bands before they had any faith in me again.”
Coll didn’t like the sound of that. Trying to seize a village? Why, Banhael was no better than the lords themselves—or, he realized with a shock, the lords were no better than Banhael, and wasn’t that what Gar had been saying last night?
No, he had been saying a bit more, at least to judge by the way he was nodding at Banhael’s words and the earnest attention he gave the bandit chief. “So you had the courage to try! But what are fifty archers and quarterstaff men against armored knights and soldiers with halberds? How many of them were there—a hundred to your fifty? Two hundred?”