“Yes, but—” Gird shook his head, uneasy about something in the guileless, open face in front of him. If it didn’t bother the man, it should. But this was one argument he lost; he found that many of the yeomen had fallen into the habit of speaking of “the luap” or “that marshal’s luap.” With Gird’s return, and Selamis’s return to Gird’s side, it quickly became “Gird’s luap.” Gird still called him Selamis, though he sometimes slipped.
Later that fall, the lords changed their strategy. They had not been able to trap Gird’s army all summer, and he had inflicted sharp losses on them. So they turned their attention ever more strongly to the land which supplied him with soldiers and supplies, forcing the evacuation of farming villages, burning them out if they resisted, stripping the countryside of resources. They had armed soldiers supervise the harvest, after which the fields were burnt; for hands of days the sky was streaked with smoke, and ash dusted travelers. Livestock they drove to the lords’ fortified towns or dwellings, and any they could not confine under guard were slaughtered to feed the soldiers.
This work proceeded at different rates in various parts of the kingdom. Some lords were loathe to lose the produce of villages they had established, and counted instead on quartering more of their own soldiers among them. Some did not have the resources to reduce or move more than one or two villages that autumn. Those that survived could choose to try escape, or wait and hope that the coming spring would change things. But Gird found more and more refugees wandering, some seeking him and some looking for any safe place to spend the winter.
His own force controlled the valley lying south and east of Brightwater. This provided a large grain harvest—large, that is, until he measured it against his increasing needs. The town of Brightwater, all the little villages, his army—the grain would feed so many only if it were carefully managed, and by his own laws (he felt the teeth of a joke in this) he could not seize it. Some, of course, would not trust him, and yield it willingly. His own followers had sometimes less patience than he did; he found himself scolding his own as often as the others about the need for fairness, the evils inherent in bullying.
“It’s not the same thing,” Ivis argued, one dank late-autumn day, when a cold rain had blackened the falling leaves to a silent dark carpet. “If we’re fair in distribution—in famine law—and all share equally, then it’s not bullying. Bullying benefits the taker—”
“So it does—and so it does here.” Gird blew his nose noisily on a bit of dirty fleece and rubbed it on his sleeve. His head was pounding, his ears felt full of water, and he was sure this was more than a fall chill. He could not feel this sick with a mere chill. “It benefits us—the takers—because then we have more to distribute fairly, and our own share—as well as others—is larger.”
“But it benefits everyone.”
“No. Not the ones who lose—who have larger shares now. Our way is right, Ivis, and better than theirs—I know that. But part of our way is how we do what we do, not just what we do.”
“If we all starve it won’t do them any good—”
“We aren’t starving yet. Besides, while I won’t bully our people, I don’t have anything against taking from our enemies.”
“I thought you said we weren’t ready to assault their fortified places.”
“A grain caravan isn’t fortified.” Gird did not bother to explain, the way his throat was hurting, that he’d suggested to outlying bartons that they attack grain caravans. Some of them were successful—successful, too, at running off herds being moved from the deserted villages. More and more bartons began even bolder actions: ambushing any guard unit unwary enough to camp outside walls, or travel carelessly along the roads and trails. Clashes between small groups of rebels and small units of guards soon convinced the guards to move only in larger numbers.
Winter snows had always meant the end of military actions, but this winter brought no peace, only the slowing of movement. Gird, struggling to codify his laws with the help of Selamis and Arranha in Brightwater, sifted the reports from distant villages. Here a barton had ambushed a lord and two hands of guards, killing all of them and leaving that domain open; there two bartons had fought off a brigand attack, only to fall to the soldiers who came onto the scene when the battle was almost over. The merchants and craftsmen of Tarrho, a town about the size of Brightwater near the eastern border, had decided to overthrow their lord and declare their freedom—then the servants and laborers had rioted, overthrowing the merchants in their turn. Tarrho’s small barton had tried to bring order, but had the trust of no faction; after bitter fighting that left many dead and the city without supplies of food, brigands rode in, looted everything, and set it afire. The king’s messengers declared it was the fault of Gird and his rebels; the barton’s survivors, who arrived in Brightwater before Midwinter, explained what had really happened.
“A good many of them brigand bands claims to be your yeoman, Gird,” the yeoman-marshal said. “Nobody knows, for sure—I mean, if they aren’t one of yours already, they don’t. So they’re afraid of your name, and the bartons.”
“That’s why we need to have our rules known,” Gird said. “If they know we have rules, and what they are, and they see that we stick to them, then perhaps they’d trust us.”
“Maybe.” The yeoman-marshal did not look convinced. Gird peered at him.
“What do you think it would take?”
“Well—sir—I think they need something to see. We can say we have rules, but that’s not enough, not for city folk used to looking up law in a book.”
“Which is why I’m writing it down,” said Gird, slapping the table and jostling Selamis’s tools. He pointed at the younger man. “This is Selamis.” He still would not say my luap. “He writes a better hand than I do, one anyone can read.”
“That should help,” the yeoman-marshal said, craning his head to see what was on the top sheet.
“It’s very simple,” Gird said. “I told him, we have to get it all into no more than four hands of rules—if people can count their fingers and toes, they’ll be able to remember them.”
And gradually, copy by copy, the first simple laws that later became the Code of Gird spread from barton to barton, even into the towns. Of necessity, these rules were suitable for a time of war; Gird could not possibly work out all the laws needed for trade and commerce in peacetime. But he was sure of his intent: cruelty was always wrong, and always harmed the community. Honesty and fair dealing were good, and helped it.
In the bitter cold and deep snows of winter, no army could march far. Stragglers came to Brightwater and the villages where Gird had some of his army encamped—starving, ragged, sometimes dying of cold even as they staggered to a fire. Gird himself traveled from one camp to another as best he could, trying to make sure that food and warmth were shared fairly among them. He knew, without needing the gnomes’ advice, that he would have to win in this coming year—at least he would have to control most of the farmland, so that his people could grow food again. Otherwise his army would starve, and then the lords would win without a fight.
Food stores dropped lower and lower. His yeomen did not grumble much, seeing Gird’s belt as tight as theirs. But the soft cries of hungry children pierced him as if they were all his own. He hardly saw Rahi or Pidi, these days; Girnis had disappeared into the dust of war and he knew nothing of her. But the children in the camps were always with him, a reminder of what he was fighting for, and what would be lost if he failed.
It was in the first days of coming spring, uncertain weather that could bring thaw or hard freeze from day to day, that he took one of his cohorts out to seek food from one of the villages that had promised it the year before. They marched four days, south and east down the valley, across a ridge, and down another valley. Gird had sent a runner ahead. But instead of a yeoman marshal, or the barton, come to meet them, he found the entire village standing grim and unwelcoming in a snow-swept meadow nearby. They would not, they said, give anything—not one stone’s weight of grain or handbasket of dried fruit. Begone, they said, before you bring the lords’ wrath down on us. Gird nodded, and looked them up and down individually.