“So it’s short for ‘grandfather,’ ” Dirk mused. “Nice to know your culture still respects the wisdom of age.”
Coll stared, thrown yet again by an alien concept. “What people would not?” Then as an afterthought, “What is a ‘culture?’ ”
“The ideas a group of people live by, and the way they express those ideas in their daily lives and the things they make,” Dirk explained. “I can see a lot that’s good in your culture, Coll.”
“But some that’s bad, too?” The serf frowned.
Dirk nodded. “Authoritarianism. Your commoners are so used to taking orders that it never occurs to them to think for themselves. What do the forest outlaws do when they’re on their own? What do these prisoners do? Look for somebody to give them orders! It’s not just Liam’s fault that he became Gaffer—they wanted him to!”
“No, wait!” Boam frowned. “We don’t like being bossed.”
“You don’t like it,” Dirk agreed, “but you don’t know how to live without it.” And he launched into an explanation of social structure.
The prisoners listened, wide-eyed and fascinated. They interrupted with loud exclamations of denial now and then, but Dirk explained, and convinced them that what he had said was true.
When the last ray of light was gone, and they had sought their meager piles of straw, Gar said quietly, “You would have made a good professor.”
“Why, thanks,” Dirk said, surprised. “But I don’t think any college would want to include this subject in the curriculum.”
The next day, Gar started them off’ with calisthenics, then turned them over to Dirk, who gave them basic lessons in falling—but only from their knees; he was wary of the stone floor. After the first few shouts of pain and anger, he let them get back on their feet and showed them the basic guard position, then some elementary kicks and punches. When they were sweaty and panting, he called a halt and asked, “When do they serve breakfast in this dump?”
“It’s right over there.” Liam pointed to the water trough. “As to food, they’ll feed us in the middle of the day, then again when the cooks throw out the garbage, if there is any.”
“Yesterday’s twilight meal, huh?” Dirk nodded grimly. “Well, exercise is supposed to hold down the appetite for a while. Take a break, guys, then report to Gar.”
Gar gave them his standard lecture on the cell system, then led them through another drill in unarmed combat. Coll was astonished that the guards didn’t stop them, but apparently they were used to shouting and scuffling in the big cell, and never thought to look. Either that, or they didn’t care.
Dirk, though, saw a man sitting in the shadows, head bowed, staying in his own corner. He went over to talk to the prisoner. Curious, Coll drifted up beside him.
“You’re missing all the fun,” Dirk said.
“Nothing in life can be fun,” the man growled. “Go away and let me die!”
“Die?” Dirk knelt down beside him. “They don’t even allow sticks in here, let alone knives! How’re you going to kill yourself?”
“Starvation,” the man snapped. “There’s no one here who will stop me—and they’ll all help me, too, by keeping the food to themselves!”
“And when you finally get hungry enough that you can’t help yourself, and try to fight for a bite, you’ll be so weak they’ll be able to swat you like a fly,” Dirk said, with distaste. “Anybody else ever try this?”
The man shrugged. “Every month or so. It always works.”
“I can believe it,” Dirk said bitterly. “What’s so bad about life, though?”
“The lords!” the man burst out. “They take our food, they take our women, they make us wear ourselves out digging in the dirt! Who would want to live?” Finally he looked up, glaring at Dirk with hot, hate-filled eyes. “And you’re one of them!”
“Yes, but I’m fighting them,” Dirk pointed out. “That’s why they kicked me in here as a traitor. Look, though—if you really want to die, why waste your life?”
The man frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Why not take a lord with you?” Dirk asked. “Or at least a knight? With the skills we’ll teach you, you might even take two or three before they kill you.”
The man stared. “Do you really think so?”
“I’ve seen it done,” Dirk said.
The man surged to his feet—and almost fell; he was already weak with hunger. Dirk caught him, and he hung on, panting, “Show me! It’s better this way.”
They had to feed him before he was strong enough to get in on the martial arts classes, of course, but he listened avidly to Gar’s teachings—and gave Dirk an idea. He began to chat with the others one by one, ferreting out those who were so consumed with burning hatred, and had lost so much in life, as to be suicidal. He persuaded them not to care how they died as long as they could take a few knights with them, then taught them to sing, to juggle, and turn handsprings. “You’ll wander the back roads from village to village,” he told them, “and carry nonsense rhymes from cell to cell. They won’t make sense to you, but the cells will understand the messages they hide. I’ll send new songs by other minstrels, with messages hidden in them.”
“But when will we kill lords!” one would-be entertainer hissed.
“When the egg hatches,” Dirk said cryptically.
“I never thought of training minstrels,” Gar admitted when Dirk told him, “or of sending encoded messages in ballads. Stroke of genius, Dirk.”
“Well, thanks,” Dirk said, pleased. “It will be slow communication, but better than nothing.”
“Much better,” Gar agreed. “In fact, I think we’ll find that the ballads will travel faster than any one person. When it’s time to rise, we can have Herkimer hop us from one location to another, releasing ballads—or even dropping them to minstrels.”
All the prisoners listened avidly as Gar taught them oral codes. “If you meet a man who you think might be of another cell, say, ‘John the miller grinds small, small.’ That’s the sign. Then if he says, ‘The king’s son of Heaven will pay for all,’ you’ll know he is one of us, and you can pass your message. But if he isn’t…”
“He’ll look at you like you’re crazy,” Liam interrupted. Gar nodded. “Another sign is: ‘The mills of the gods grind slowly,’ and the countersign is, ‘But they grind exceedingly small.’ Now, let’s say you want to tell another cell that there are thirteen cells already formed, but…”
“Are there really?” Roam asked, eyes huge.
“Sixteen.” Dirk nodded toward Gar. “He doesn’t bother keeping count—that’s my job.”
A respectful murmur passed through the prisoners, and they all straightened a little, gaining heart.
Gar went on. “But there’s always the chance that a spy might happen by and overhear. You don’t want him to understand, of course, so you say it in code, like this: ‘Mother Goose is sitting on sixteen eggs.’ ”
“So each cell is an ‘egg’?” Liam asked.
“Yes, and ‘Mother Goose’ is our uprising. If someone tells you, ‘The eggs will hatch next Fiveday at fourteen hundred,’ that will mean that all the cells will rise against whatever targets they’ve been assigned next Thursday—Sunday is ‘Oneday,’ and you count from there—and ‘fourteen hundred’ is two o’clock.”
“Two hours past noon, yes!” Boam nodded eagerly. “So eight o’clock in the morning would be eight hundred, and noon would be twelve hundred.”
Gar nodded, but a third prisoner asked, “Will that happen soon? The eggs hatching, I mean?”
“Not so soon as I would like,” Gar told him, “but sooner than you think. Back to practice, now.”
Late in the afternoon, the guards shoveled in a load of straw that was only slightly used, fresh out of the great hall. Gar set Coll to binding some of it into imitation quarterstaves, and he set to teaching the prisoners how to use them. They stayed two weeks. Then Gar told Liam, “It’s time to leave.”