"I haven't done much."
"You've shown Toma that a man can be proud without being pig-headed. When he's wrong. But maybe you don't see it. Tain. I've lived with that man for eighteen years. I know him too well."
"I see." He touched her hand lightly, recognizing a long and emotionally difficult speech from a woman accustomed to keeping her own counsel.
He didn't know how to help her, though. An unmarried soldier's life hadn't prepared him. Not for a woman who moved him more than should be, for reasons he couldn't comprehend. A part of him said that women were people too, and should respond the same as men, but another part saw them as aliens, mysterious, perhaps even creatures of dread. "If I have done good, I have brought honor to the house."
He chuckled at his own ineptitude. Iwa Skolovdan just didn't have the necessary range of tonal nuance.
"You've given me hope for the first time since Shirl...." she blurted. "I mean, I can see where we're getting somewhere now. I can see Toma seeing it.
"Tain, I never wanted to come to the Zemstvi. I hate it. I hated it before we left home. Maybe I hated it so much that I made it impossible for Toma to succeed. I drove Shirl away...."
"Yes. I could see it. But don't hate yourself for being what you are."
"His dreams were dying, Tain. And I wouldn't give him anything to replace them. And I have to hate myself for that. But now he's coming alive again. He doesn't have to go on being stubborn, just to show me."
"Don't hate anybody, Rula. It's contagious. You end up hating everything, and everybody hates you."
"I can't ever like the Zemstvi. But I love Toma. And with you here, like a rock, he's becoming more like the boy I married. He's started to find his courage again. And his hope. That gives me hope. And that's why I wanted to thank you."
"A rock?"
"Yes. You're there. You don't criticize, you don't argue, you don't judge, you don't fear. You know. You make things possible.... Oh, I don't know how to say what I want. I think the fear is the biggest thing. It doesn't control us anymore."
"I don't think it's all my fault. Rula. You've done your part." He was growing unsettled. Even embarrassed.
She touched his arm. "You're strong, Tain. So strong and sure. My brother Mikla.... He was sure, but not always strong. He fought with Toma all the time."
Tain glanced south across the green hills. Toma had gone to the village in hopes of obtaining metal that could be used in the windmill Tain was going to build. He had been gone for hours.
A tiny silhouette topped a distant rise. Tain sighed in a mixture of disappointment and relief. He was saved having to face the feelings Rula was stirring.
Toma loved the windmill. He wanted to let the house ride till it was finished. Tain had suggested that they might, with a little ingenuity, provide running water. Rula would like that. It was a luxury only lords and merchant princes enjoyed.
Rula followed his gaze. Embarrassment overtook her. Tain yielded the jar and watched her flee.
Soon Toma called, "I got it, Tain! Bryon had an old wagon. He sold me enough to do the whole thing." He rushed to the forge, unburdened himself of a pack filled with rusty iron.
Tain examined the haul. "Good. More than enough for the bushings. You keep them greased, the windmill will last a lifetime."
Toma's boyish grin faded.
"What happened? You were gone a long time."
"Come on in the house. Share a jar of beer with me."
Tain put his tools away and followed Toma. Glancing eastward, he saw the white stain of Steban's flock dribbling down a distant slope, heading home. Beyond Steban, a little south, stood the grotesque rock formation locals called the Toad. The Sharans believed it the home of a malignant god.
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.