“Lost or slain, what difference?” Coll said bitterly. “No, no, son! ‘Lost’ meaning no one knows where they are! No dead bodies found, nor no living ones neither!”
“Fled?” Coll looked up, a light of hope in his eye.
“I don’t doubt it,” Gar said. “Remember my concern about the soldiers who might have taken cover in the greenwood? Banhael will find many new recruits for his band, I think, but not very many women.”
“Oh, there will be those, too,” Mama said darkly. “Ours wasn’t the only village trampled beneath the soldiers’ feet, sir, I assure you! Already these vagabonds have heard of four other clusters of serf huts gone, and the people fled.”
“There must be hiding places other than the forest,” Gar said, frowning.
“To be sure, there are, and many of the men will find their way back to their homes, if their villages still stand. Many more will find their way back to their lord’s castle, since they’ve no place else to go.”
“But the bones of many others will someday be found, in the thickets and the crannies where they crawled away to die,” Coll said, scowling.
“I fear so,” Mama sighed. “Thus has it always been—thus will it always be, and we women must bring more men into the world so that humankind doesn’t kill itself off completely.”
“Perhaps it deserves to!”
“No, Coll, it doesn’t,” Gar said gently. “Who began this war, anyway?”
“Who begins them all?” Coll retorted. “The lords!” Gar nodded. “So if you take away the lords, perhaps the wars will stop, at least for a while.”
Dicea and Mama stared in fright at the enormity of the treason Gar spoke, but Coll only laughed a short and bitter laugh. “That’s what you’ve preached to Banhael, isn’t it? But no matter what you said, he heard nothing about killing off the lords completely—he only heard a chance to become a lord himself! That’s the only change that will come about if you slay them all, sir knight—new ones will arise, and worse than the ones before! They’d have to be, or they wouldn’t have been able to kill the old ones!”
Dirk shook his head. “It’s possible to keep the lords out, Coll. The people can band together and pull down any man who tries to boss them.”
Coll stared at him, then recovered. “Band together? How? Under a leader! And what’s to keep that leader from becoming a lord, hey?”
“The people,” Gar told him, “if they’re all armed and all trained to fight, and if there’s a law that says the leaders can’t do anything without their consent.”
Coll stared at him as though he were insane. “A law? The leaders make the laws!”
“Doesn’t have to be.” Dirk shook his head. “The people can gather together to agree on what laws they want to make, then pull down any leader who tries to break those laws.”
“A law stronger than a lord?” Coll stared at him. “Are you crazed?”
“No, Coll, and neither is Sir Gar.” Dicea laid her hand on her brother’s forearm, but her glowing gaze was all for Dirk. “If they say it can be done, it can.”
Coll glanced at her face, saw more fascination with men than with laws, and knew there was no point in speaking any further. “Have it as you will,” he said bitterly.
“It’s worth a try,” Mama said slowly. “Give them that much, son—it’s worth a try. In fact, if the men leave it up to the women to decide, there will never be any wars.”
Well, Coll had seen women come to blows, though not as often as men, so he found room to doubt. Even so, he had to admit the women would declare fewer wars than the men.
Gar nodded slowly. “I’ve heard of such an arrangement before—a men’s council and a women’s, with both needing to agree before any action can be taken.”
“Why not simply have women in the same council?” Dicea seemed very excited by the idea, so excited she couldn’t keep it in, but she spoke very softly, as though trying not to be heard.
Gar nodded gravely, though, turning to her. “That has been tried, too.” He shrugged. “Each people seems to have its own needs and requires its own form of council.”
Coll stared. “Do you mean to say that every people is governed by a council?”
“A system of councils, I should say,” Gar said slowly, “and I have heard that some peoples are better governed without any such meetings—but I have never seen any.”
“Do you mean to tell me that the outlaws are ruled by a council, not by Banhael?”
“The outlaws are a council,” Dirk explained. “They’re a small enough group so that everyone can speak up—and they did. Banhael was constantly talking with one man, three men, five, persuading, intimidating, asking—but he couldn’t just command, except in battle. They didn’t have to meet as a council—they met for dinner every night—but they were a council anyway.”
Coll stared at him; then his eyes lost focus as he remembered what he had seen of the way Banhael spent his day. Dirk was right—he had been constantly chivying and haranguing. “Will these mountebanks prove to be a council, too?”
Dirk shrugged. “We’ll have to see. Whatever else they are, they should be great cover for five people on the run.”
“Cover?” Dicea frowned. “How do they cover us?”
“A hiding place, Dicea,” Gar explained. “If we disguise ourselves as vagabonds and travel with them, no one will think to look for us among them.”
Dicea stared. “Knights disguise themselves as vagabonds?”
“Is it any worse than hiding among outlaws?” Dirk countered.
“I’ve disguised myself as worse; to escape when my side has lost,” Gar assured her.
“But the king won!” Coll exclaimed.
“Yes, but many of the Earl’s troops, and some of his knights, escaped and are roaming the countryside,” Gar told him. “We’ll have to move carefully in seeking to rejoin the king—very carefully, and very slowly.”
Coll lifted his head, understanding. Gar didn’t want to rejoin the king—at least, not right away. Why? Well, that didn’t really matter. All that did was that Gar and Dirk were bound on wandering for a while. And if they wandered in the company of that red-haired wonder, Coll certainly had no objection.
“The mountebanks should be glad of an armed escort, then,” Gar observed. “If we hide our shields, no one will know we’re knights unless they’ve already met us.”
Dirk nodded. “After all, we don’t wear any more armor than your average heavy trooper.”
Dicea’s eyes were wide; she looked scandalized, but was trying (unsuccessfully) not to let it show. Coll only grinned and nodded; it was the kind of ruse in which he was beginning to delight. “Shall I hide my spear?”
“No, we’ll claim we’re mercenaries, and we hired you to do the dirty work.” Dirk grinned. “No lie like the truth, eh? Just hide your royal tabard.”
Coll pulled the tabard over his head and folded it. “Done.”
But Mama looked worried. “What if a king’s knight discovers you?”
“Then we tell him that we’re traveling in disguise to learn more about the lords and their weak points,” Dirk told her.
Again, Coll thought, no lie like the truth.
“One could almost wish our side had lost,” Gar sighed. “Then there would be no fear of someone accusing us of being deserters.”
“Not much worry about that, anyway,” Dirk pointed out. “After all, we left in such a hurry that we didn’t get paid.”