Gar nodded slowly, then lashed out another question. “How did you know I was a lord?”
“Why … your manner of speech, your bearing, your whole manner!” the man stammered, and the other men nodded and muttered agreement.
“But you must know I’m not a real lord,” Gar pressed, “or there wouldn’t have been any nonsense about a challenge from your leader. You would have all leaped upon me and struck and struck until I moved no more.”
The men exchanged startled glances. Apparently they hadn’t thought of that.
“What, do you mean to say you wouldn’t dare?” Gar scoffed.
“Uh, Gar…” Dirk sidled up to him. “Maybe we ought to leave well enough alone.”
“But it isn’t ‘well enough,’ ” Gar insisted, and to the prisoners, “Stop and think. If you strike down a lord, who’s going to punish you for it?”
“Why, the soldiers,” said one of the men, as though not believing that someone could even ask about something so obvious.
“And what will the soldiers do?”
“Throw you into prison until they’re ready to hang you!”
“But you’re already in prison,” Gar pointed out.
The prisoners all looked startled, then exchanged thoughtful glances. One or two turned to look Gar up and down. Coll could almost hear their thoughts.
So could Gar. “Of course, not very many lords are as big as I am, nor always with friends who are such expert fighters.”
Now the appraising glanced turned to Dirk. Still grinning, he stepped forward—and suddenly whirled, catching one of the appraisers by the arm and shirtfront, then whirling on to throw him howling into a handful of others. They went down with enough shouting to fill the whole room. Dirk stepped back, eyes glinting with satisfaction, and watched them disentangle themselves, then rise again. When the noise quieted, he admitted, “Lords do know more about fighting than serfs.”
Coll was glad they’d been giving him lessons.
“The question is,” Gar told them, “what do you have left to lose?”
“Why, our lives!” said another of the men, as though he were talking to an idiot.
“Really! You expect to get out of here someday, then.” They stared at him, amazed; then the anger began to grow.
Gar nodded with satisfaction. “When you have nothing left to lose, why not strike back? All they can do is kill you!”
“Aye, and send us to Hell,” one man said bitterly. “Will you go to Hell for killing a lord who grinds his people under his foot, and uses them for his own cruel pleasures? ” Gar countered. “Or will you go to Heaven for trying to save his serfs from their misery?”
Again, they all looked startled.
“You’re hitting them with too many new ideas, too fast,” Dirk said to him in an undertone. “You’re going to lose them.”
Gar nodded. “Then I’d better jump to the summary.” He raised his voice again. “You can fight for your freedom, and the freedom of all your kin! If I’m your Gaffer now, that’s my rule: that I’ll teach you how to fight, and when!” They stared, too dazed to argue.
The former Gaffer stirred and groaned.
Gar knelt by him, put an arm under his shoulders, and helped him sit up. “I know it hurts, but it’ll go away in time. You there! Get him water!” He looked down at Liam the smith. “You hit hard, friend.”
The man looked up, startled by the word, and the tone.
“You’re no slouch yourself,” he said slowly. “Know a few tricks, don’t you?”
“Yes, and I’ll teach them to you.”
Liam’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Then I could beat you!”
“No, you couldn’t.” Gar’s grin wasn’t nice. “I’d still know more. In fact, I could teach you fifty, and I’d still know more.”
“Better believe him,” Dirk said, in a tone that implied he himself had found out the hard way.
Liam stared up at Gar, then nodded. “I’ll learn them, then.” He broke off as another man thrust a dipperful of water at him. He drank it at a draft, then gave the bearer a long, measuring look before he handed the dipper back and turned to Gar again. “So you’re the Gaffer now, eh?”
Gar stared at him for a moment, wooden-faced, and Coll realized he was surprised at the quickness of the Gaffer’s intelligence. Then Gar said, “I am, and Dirk here is my lieutenant—but you’re my sergeant.”
The man gave a grudging nod, then asked Dirk, “Could you beat me?” His answer was a slow grin, but Gar said, “Even if he couldn’t; I would. Be satisfied with sergeant, friend.”
“Good advice,” the man admitted. “I’m Liam.”
“Well met, Liam.” Gar clasped his hand, then pushed himself to his feet, dragging Liam along with him.
The new sergeant stood, grinning up at his new gaffer. “You’ll do. What’s your first order?”
“A question. Do you have any poles in here?”
“What, something to strike at the guards with? They’d never! ”
Gar nodded as though he’d expected that. “Go form your men into two lines, then. Dirk, would you take Coll and start these men on their training?”
“Why, sure.” Dirk beckoned to Coll and went to the double line that was forming in response to Liam’s barks.
“That one there.” Dirk pointed to a big bruiser a head taller than Coll. “Show him how to do a hip throw.”
Coll looked the man up and down and quailed inside—the brute outweighed him by a good stone or two. But he couldn’t shame himself in front of Dirk, so he strolled up to the grinning ape, then shot out hands, whirled, and laid the man on the floor just as Gar had done to Liam. The sergeant chuckled at the victim’s yelp of surprise.
Dirk nodded. “Okay, back in line. Let’s take that a little slower now. Face me, Coll.” He began the movements in slow motion, describing what he was doing every step of the way.
Gar watched them, nodding approval now and then. While they practiced, he strolled around the huge cell, inspecting the conditions. When the men finished practice, cursing and sweating, he let them rest and drink a little water, then put them to work with broken crockery, shoveling the malodorous straw off into one corner, which he thenceforth dubbed the “privy,” and sternly forbade the men to answer a call of nature in any other part of the room. Then he set them to work scrubbing the floor with rags. There was plenty of water, at least, fed by a pipe through the wall, probably from the moat. There was a huge heap of more or less fresh straw that Liam had been using for his private bed; Gar divided it up so that every man had at least enough to lay between himself and the cold stones of the floor when he slept. By the time the jailers shoved dinner through the flap in the door, the huge stone chamber seemed surprisingly neat, and almost clean.
Liam looked about, nodding as he chewed. “You’ve done wonders already … Gaffer.” He said the word as though it had a bad taste, but he said it. “I hadn’t thought it was possible.”
“Thank you,” Gar said. “At least we can practice without tripping on offal. When will they bring fresh straw?”
Liam shrugged. “When it pleases them. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year.”
“Then we’ll have to be careful about throws. In fact, we had better avoid them as long as possible.”
Liam blinked. “You didn’t hesitate to throw me—or to have your man Coll throw Boam!”
“Yes, but we knew how to make sure you wouldn’t land full force. All of you will learn that, but I’d rather not have broken bones while you’re learning.”
“What’s a ‘gaffer’?” Dirk asked Coll.
Coll jolted out of a daydream about Ciare—her glowing eyes, her tempting lips. “A gaffer?” he asked in surprise. “It’s what you call an old man.”
“A village elder, for example?” Coll frowned. “Any old man.”