For some time he knew nothing, felt nothing, and the hours passed over him. He woke, with a countryman’s instinct, at dusk, when the evening breeze brought the hayfield scent up over the wood, and tickled his nose with it. He ached in every limb; his scratches burned and itched, and his mouth tasted foul. Until he was up on his knees, he did not remember where he was, or why—but then a spasm of fear and shame doubled him up, and sourness filled his mouth. He gulped and heaved again. Meris, a boy he had known—a lad who had tagged behind him, more than once—would never walk straight again, or hold tools, and he had worn the uniform of the one who had done it.
He could hear his mother’s voice ringing in his head. This was what she’d meant, about taking service of iron, and leaving the Lady of Peace. This was what his father had feared, that he would use his strength to hurt his own people. Scalding tears ran, down his face. He had been so happy, so proud, only a few days before . . . he had been so sure that his family’s fears were the silly fears of old-fashioned peasants, “mere farmers,” as the sergeant so often called them.
Arin came to the cleft before dawn, sliding silently between the trees. “Gird?” he called softly. “Gird!—you here?”
Gird coiled himself into an even tighter and more miserable ball as far back as he could burrow, but Arin came all the way in, and squatted down beside him.
“You stink,” he said companionably, one brother to another. “The dogs will have no trouble.”
“Dogs?” Gird had not thought of dogs, but now remembered the long-tailed hounds that had gone out with the tracker after wolves.
“I brought you a shirt,” said Arin. “And a bit of bread. Go wash.” The very matter-of-factness of Arin’s voice, the big brother he had always listened to, made it possible for him to unclench himself and stagger to his feet. He took the shirt from Arin without looking at it, and moved out of the cleft before stripping off his clothes. In the clean chill of dawn, he could smell himself, the fear-sweat and vomit and blood so different from the honest sweat of toil. Arin smelled of onions and earth. He wished he could be an onion, safe underground. But the cold water, and a bunch of creekside herbs crushed to scrub with, cleansed the stench from his body. His mind was different: he could still hear Meris scream, still feel, as in his own body, the crack of breaking bones.
“Hurry up,” said Arin, behind him. “I’ve got to talk to you.”
Gird rinsed his mouth in the cold water, and drank a handful, then another. He pulled on the shirt Arin had brought; it was barely big enough across the shoulders, and his wrists stood out of the sleeves, but it covered him. Arin handed him the bread. Gird had not thought he was hungry, but he wolfed the bread down in three bites. He could have eaten a whole loaf.
By this time it was light enough to see his brother’s drawn face, and read his expression. Arin shook his head at him. “Girdi, you’re like that bullcalf that got loose and stuck in the mire three years ago—do you remember? Thought he was grown, he was so big, but once out of his pen and in trouble, he bawled for help like any new-weaned calf,” Gird said nothing; he could feel tears rising in his eyes again, and his throat closed. “Girdi, you have to go back.” That opened his eyes, and his throat.
“I can’t!” he said, panting. “Arin, I can’t—you didn’t see—”
“I saw.” Arin’s voice had hardened. “We all saw; the count made sure of it. But it’s that or outlaw, Girdi, and you won’t live to be an outlaw—the count will hunt you down, and the fines will fall on our family.”
It was another load of black guilt on top of the other. “So—so I must die?”
“No.” Arin had picked up a stick, and poked it into the moss-covered ground near the creek. “At least—I hope not. What your sergeant said was that if someone knew where you were, and if you’d turn yourself in, he thought he could save your life. And we’d not lose our holding. The steward . . . the steward’s not with the count in this. You saw that. But you have to come in, Gird, on your own. If they chase and capture you—”
“I can’t be a soldier,” said Gird. “I can’t do that—what they did—”
“So I should hope. They don’t want you now, anyway.” Even in his misery, that hurt. He knew he’d been a promising recruit, barring his slowness in learning to read; he knew the sergeant had had hopes for him. And now he’d lost all that, forever. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he’d also lost plentiful free food. “We can use you,” Arin went on. “We always could.”
His mind was a stormy whirlwind of fear and grief and shame. He could imagine what the sergeant would say, the sneers of the other men, the ridicule. And surely he would be punished, for disgracing them so, and breaking his oath of service. Would he be left like Meris, a cripple? Better to die . . . and yet he did not want to die. The thought of it, hanging or the sword in his neck—and those were the easy ways—terrified him. Arin’s look was gentle.
“Poor lad. You’re still just a boy, after all, aren’t you? For all the long arms and legs, for all the bluster you’ve put on this past spring.”
“I’m—sorry.” He could not have said all he was sorry for, but a great sore lump of misery filled his head and heart.
“I know.” Arin sighed. “But I’m not sorry to think of you working beside me, Gird, when this is over. Come now: wash your face again, and let’s be going back.”
He felt light-headed on the way, but the stiffness worked out of his legs quickly. His soiled uniform rolled under his arm, he followed Arin down paths he hardly remembered.
“We need to hurry,” said Arin over his shoulder. “They were going to start searching again this morning, and I’d like to get you down to the village before they set the dogs loose.”
“What—what happened, after—”
“After you bolted? Near a riot, that was, with everyone screaming and thrashing about. It took awhile to settle, and the count had more to think of than you. Then your sergeant came to our place, and talked to father. Said you’d deserted, and they’d have to hunt you unless you came back on your own, and even if you did it might go hard with you. He didn’t like the count’s sentence on Meris any more than the rest of us, but . . . he had to go along. He took out a few of the men late in the evening, calling for you. I was sure you’d come up here.”
“I didn’t think,” said Gird. “I just couldn’t stand it—”
“Mmm. Then the steward came, after dark.” Arin stepped carefully over a tangle of roots and went on. “Said we’d lose the holding, the way the count felt. He’d come down to show off his inheritance to his friends from court, all those fine lords and ladies, and then Meris hit him with an onion—”
“He what!”
“That’s right. You probably don’t know what really happened. Meris was stealing fruit, thinking everyone would be busy out front, but the count wanted to show the ladies the garden, and hurried through. So when Meris was spotted, he ran straight into the count and knocked him flat, in front of his friends, and then fired an onion at him from the top of the wall. Probably thought it was a guard. Poor lad.”
Gird was silent, thinking what sort of man would cripple a boy for such a ridiculous mistake.
“He was wrong, of course, and now we’re all in trouble, from the steward on down, but—” Arin flashed a grin back over his shoulder. “At least you didn’t take part in it—and if they want to call it cowardice, well, I say brave men have better to do than batter rash boys into ruin.”
“I don’t want to die,” said Gird suddenly, into the green silence of the wood.