“You should know,” said the steward without preamble, “what your rashness will cost your father. He must appear at court, the afternoon of the count’s investiture. I have spoken with the count, and pled what I can: your youth, your father’s record of work, your brothers. But the fact is, the count is angry, and with reason. And your father, head of your family, will be fined. I came to tell him, that he might have it ready to pay, and save himself a night in the stocks.”
Gird met his father’s eyes. His father in the stocks? For his running away?
“You will attend as well, boy, and it may be the count will have something to say to you. He is your lord; he may do as he pleases. Remember your rank, and try—” the emphasis was scornful, “to cause no more trouble.”
When the steward had gone, Gird’s father patted his shoulder. “It’s all right, Gird. You’re here, and alive, and—it’s all right.” Gird knew it was not. For the first time in his life, he realized that he could do harm he could not mend. He felt at once helpless and young, and far removed from the boyish confidence of a few days before.
“What—how much is the fine?” he asked.
His father cleared his throat. “Well. They want repaid all they spent on your training. It’s all in the steward’s accounts, he says. Food, clothing, the coppers he sent me, even barracks room. And then a fine for oath-breaking—” Gird had never really mastered figures, but he knew he’d worn clothes worth far more than his family could have bought him. And eaten more, of better food. His father turned to Arin. “I’ll have to ask you—”
Arin nodded. “Of course. Will it be enough?”
His father scrubbed at his face with both hands. “We’ll see. Gird, you were too young before: come here, now, and see where our coins lie hid.”
He had known it was under some stone in the fireplace; everyone hid valuables that way. But not which—and before his father levered out the stone, he would not have suspected that one. Within was a leather pouch, and in that his father’s small store of coppers and silvers. His father counted it out twice.
“I saved most of your wages, for Arin’s marriage-price, and Hara’s dower. There’s a hand of coppers, and another hand of coppers. But a fine of double the field-fee—that’s a silver and a hand of coppers, and doubled—” He laid it out as he spoke, handling the coins as gingerly as if they were nettles to sting him. Gird held his breath, thinking of the hours of labor, baskets of fruit and grain, that each represented. “And the uniforms—” The last of the coppers went into a row, and his father frowned, shaking his head. “ ‘Tis not enough, even so. They might have let you keep the boots, at least, if we must pay for them.”
“How much?” asked his mother.
“Eight copper crabs, and that’s if the count holds to the steward’s say. I doubt he will. It’ll be a sheep, then, or a furl of cloth.”
“I have a furl, set by,” his mother said. “It was for—”
“No matter what it was for,” said his father harshly. “It is for Gird’s life, now.”
“I know that,” said his mother. Gird watched as she opened the press that stored her weaving, and pulled out a rolled furl of cloth. His father touched it lightly, and nodded.
“We’ll hope that will do,” he said.
The lord held court in the yard, with the count seated beneath an awning striped orange and yellow. None of his noble friends was with him; having sat through his investiture at midnight, they had all slept late.
Despite Gird’s father’s oath to the steward that they would appear, one of the soldiers came that morning to march them up to the manor gates. He had studiously ignored Gird; others had not, small children who had stared and called and been yanked back within cottages by their mothers. Gird’s feet were sore, not yet toughened to going bare, and his shirt had already split. His mother had patched it the night before. He was acutely aware of the patch, of his bare feet, of the difference between Gird, Dorthan’s son, peasant boy, and Gird the recruit.
That contrast was sharpened when he watched the other recruits accepted into service as they gave their oaths to the count, and pinned on the badges of guard private. None of them met his eyes, not even Keri. One by one they came forward, knelt, swore, and returned to the formation. Gird’s heart contracted. For one moment he wanted to throw himself before the count and beg to be reinstated. Then his roving eye saw the stocks, with the stains of Meris’s blood still dark on the wood.
Another case preceded theirs. The steward had intended it, Gird knew, as the ritual single case the new lord must judge; he had saved it back from the spring courts. Now he rushed the witnesses through their stories of missing boundary stone and suspected encroachment on someone’s strip of arable. Clearly not even the plaintiff and defendant thought it was as important as before, compared with Gird and his father. The count concurred with the steward’s assessment, and the loser didn’t bother to scowl as he paid his two copper crabs to the winner, and another to the count.
Then it was their turn. The steward called his father forward; Gird followed two paces behind, as he’d been bidden. To his surprise, the sergeant came too.
The count’s face was drawn down in a scowl of displeasure that didn’t quite conceal an underlying glee. The steward began, explaining how Gird had been recruited.
“A big, strong lad, already known as a hard worker. He seemed brave enough then, as boys go—” He turned to the sergeant.
“Willing to work, yes. Obedient, strong . . . not too quick in his mind, my lord, but there’s good soldiers enough that can’t do more than he did. Never gave trouble in the barracks.”
“And he gave you no hint of his . . . weakness?” The count’s voice this day was almost silken smooth, no hint of the wild rage he’d shown before.
The sergeant frowned. “Well, my lord, he did in a way. He didn’t like hurting things, he said once, and he never did give up his peasant superstitions. Flowers to the well-sprite, and that sort of thing.”
“Complained of hard treatment, did he?”
“No, my lord. Not that. Like I said, a willing enough lad, when it came to hard work, not one to complain at all. But too soft. I put it down to his being young, and never from home, but that was wrong.”
“Indeed.” The count stared at Gird until he felt himself go hot all over. “Big lout. Not well-favored, no quality in him. Some are born cattle, you know, and others are born wolves. You can make sheepdogs of wolves, but nothing of cattle save oxen in yokes. He looks stupid enough. I can’t imagine why you ever considered him; if you want to stay in my service, you’d best not make such mistakes again.”
“No, my lord,” said the sergeant and steward, almost in the same breath.
“Well,” said the count, “to settle young oxen, put stones on the load. You had a recommendation, steward?” The steward murmured; Gird heard again the terms his father had told him. The count nodded. “Well enough, so far as it goes, but not quite far enough. Let one of my Finyathans give the boy a whipping, and if his father wants him whole, let him pay the death-gift for his life. Else geld the young ox, and breed no more cowards of him.” His eyes met Gird’s, and he smiled. “Do you like my judgment, boy?”
Beside him, his father was rigid with shock and fear; Gird bowed as well as he could. The death-gift for a son was a cow and its calf that year. A third of their livestock gone, or his future sons and daughters. He knew his father would pay, but the cost!
The steward muttered again; the count shook his head. “Let the father pay now. What is it to be, fellow?” Gird’s father stepped forward, and laid the pouch of coins, and the furl of cloth, on the table. The steward took the pouch and counted the coins quickly.