Toma passed the beer. "The Caydarmen visited Kosku again. He wouldn't give them the animals."
Tain still didn't understand. He said nothing.
"They won't stand for it," Rula said. "There'll be trouble."
Toma shrugged. "There'll always be trouble. Comes of being alive." He pretended a philosophical nonchalance. Tain read the fear he was hiding. "They'll probably come tonight...."
"You've been drinking," Rula snapped. "You're not going to...."
"Rula, it's got to stop. Somebody has to show them the limits. We've reached ours. Kosku has taken up the mantle. The rest of us can't...."
"Tain, talk to him."
Tain studied them, sensed them. Their fear made the house stink. He said nothing. After meeting her eyes briefly, he handed Toma the beer and ignored her appeal. He returned to his forge, dissipated his energies pumping the bellows and hammering cherry iron. He didn't dare insinuate himself into their argument. It had to remain theirs alone.
Yet he couldn't stop thinking, couldn't stop feeling. He hammered harder, driven by a taint of anger.
His very presence had altered Toma. Rula had said as much The man wouldn't have considered supporting this Kosku otherwise. Simply by having entered the man's life he was forcing Toma to prove something. To himself? Or to Rula?
Tain hammered till the hills rang. Neutral as he had tried to remain, he had become heir to a responsibility. Toma had to be shielded from the consequences of artificial bravado.
"Tain?"
The hammer's thunder stammered. "Steban? Home so early?"
"It's almost dark."
"Oh. I lost track of time." He glanced at his handiwork. He had come near finishing while roaming his own mind. "What is it?"
"Will you teach me to be a soldier?"
Tain drove the tongs into the coals as if their mound contained the heart of an enemy. "I don't think so. Your mother...."
"She won't care. She's always telling me to learn something."
"Soldiering isn't what she has in mind. She means your father's lessons."
"Tain, writing and ciphers are boring. And what good did they do my Dad? Anyway, he's only teaching me because Mother makes him."
What kind of world did Rula live in, there behind the mask of her face? Tain wondered.
It couldn't be a happy world. It had suffered the deaths of too many hopes. Time had beaten her down. She had become an automaton getting through each day with the least fuss possible.
"Boring, but important. What good a soldier who can't read or write? All he can do is carry a spear."
"Can you read?"
"Six languages. Every soldier in my army learns at least two. To become a soldier in my country is like becoming a priest in yours, Steban."
Rula, he thought. Why do I find you unique when you're just one of a million identical sisters scattered through the feudal west? The entire sub-continent lay prostrate beneath the heel of a grinding despair, a ponderous changelessness. It was a tinder-dry philosophical forest. The weakest spark flung off by a hope-bearing messiah would send it up.
"A soldier's training isn't just learning to use a sword, Steban. It's learning a way of life. I could teach you to fence, but you'd never become a master. Not till you learned the discipline, the way of thinking and living you need to...."
"Boy, you going to jabber all night? Get those sheep in the pens."
Toma leaned against the doorframe of the house. A jar of beer hung from his hand. Tain sensed the random anger rushing around inside him. It would be as unpredictable as summer lightning.
"Take care of the sheep, Steban. I'll help water them later."
He cleaned up his forge, then himself, then carried water till Rula called them to supper.
Anger hung over the meal like a cloying fog rolling in off a noisome marsh. Tain was its focus.
Rula wanted him to control Toma. Toma wanted his support. And Steban wanted a magical access to the heroic world his uncle had created from the bloodies most ineptly fought, and most pointless war of recent memory Tain ate in silence.
Afterward, he said, "I've nearly finished the bushings and shaft bearings. We can start the tower tomorrow."
Toma grunted.
Tain shrugged. The man's mood would have to take care of itself.
He glanced at Rula. The appeal remained in her eyes. He rose, obtained a jar of beer, broke the seal, sipped. "A toast to the windmill." He passed it to Toma.
"Steban, let's get the rest of that water."
A breeze had come up during supper. Cool and moist, it promised rain. Swift clouds were racing toward the mountains, obscuring the stars. Maybe, Tain thought, the weather would give Rula what he could not.
"Mom and Dad are mad at each other, aren't they?"
"I think so."
"Because of the Koskus?"
"Yes." The walk from the spring seemed to grow longer.
"Dad's afraid. Of the Caydarmen." Steban sounded disappointed.
"With good reason, I imagine." Tain hadn't met any of the Baron's mercenaries. He hadn't met any of the neighbors, either. None had come calling He hadn't done any visiting during his reconnaisances.
"Soldiers aren't ever afraid."
Tain chuckled. "Wrong, Steban. Soldiers are always afraid. We just learn to handle fear. Your Dad didn't have to learn when you lived in the city. He's trying to catch up now."
"I'd show those Caydarmen. Like I showed that wolf."
"There was only one wolf, Steban. There're a lot of Caydarmen."
"Only seven. And the Witch."
"Seven? And a witch?"
"Sure. Torfin. Bodel. Grimnir. Olag. I don't remember the others."
"What about this witch? Who's she?"
Steban wouldn't answer for a while. Then, "She tells them what to do. Dad says the Baron was all right till she went to the Tower."
"Ah." So. Another fragment of puzzle. Who would have thought this quiet green land, so sparsely settled, could be so taut and mysterious?
Tain tried pumping Steban, but the boy clammed up about the Baron.
"Do you think Pa's a coward, Tain?"
"No. He came to the Zemstvi. It takes courage for a man to leave everything just on the chance he might make a better life someplace else."
Steban stopped and stared at him. There had been a lot of emotion in his voice. "Like you did?"
"Yes. Like I did. I thought about it a lone time."
"Oh."
"This ought to be enough water. Let's go back to the house."
He glanced at the sky.
"Going to rain," he said as they went inside.
"Uhm," Toma grunted. He finished one jar and started another. Tain smiled thinly. Kleckla wouldn't be going out tonight. He turned his smile on Rula.
She smiled back. "Maybe you'd better sleep here. The barn leaks."
"I'll be all right. I patched it some yesterday morning."
"Don't you ever sleep?"
"Old habits die hard. Well, the sheep are watered. I'm going to turn in."
"Tain?"
He paused at the door.
"Thanks."
He ducked into the night. Misty raindrops kissed his cheeks. A rising wind quarreled with itself in the grove.
He performed the Soldier's Ritual, then lay back on the straw pallet he had fashioned. But sleep wouldn't come.
VIII
The roan quivered between his knees as they descended the hill. It wasn't because of the wind and cold rain. The animal sensed the excitement and uncertainty of its rider.
Tain guided the roan into a brushy gully, dismounted, told the horse to wait. He moved fifty yards downslope, sat down against a boulder. So still did he remain that he seemed to become one with the stone.
The Kosku stead looked peaceful to an untrained eye. Just a quiet rural place passing a sleepy night.
But Tain felt the wakefulness there. Someone was watching the night. He could taste their fear and determination.
The Caydarmen came an hour later. There were three of them bearing torches. They didn't care who saw them. They came down the hill from behind Tain and passed within fifty yards of him None noticed him.