Across the field he could see Arin’s oldest lugging water up to the fieldmasters. Another selion or two, and it would be time for the noon break. He was not tired, but he was hungry, his belly reminding him how long it had been since that crust of bread before dawn. He could smell cooking food even over the rich smell of ripe grain around him. They were supposed to lunch on the lord’s bounty when harvesting the great field, but that bounty had been less each year. Back before Arin’s death, it had meant meat as well as bread, and barrels of ale. In his childhood he remembered harvest meals of roast meat, bread, cheese, and sweet cakes, heavy with honey and spices. Last year, bread and meat broth only; the men had grumbled, but what good did that do? The steward would not kill one of the lord’s sheep or cows for grumbling alone. He had not grumbled; he could not afford to, with two families to support. It did no good to become known as a grumbler. He’d eaten his bread and broth, taking an extra helping while others complained.
He looked ahead critically. They might finish the great field in two days, at this pace, and then begin the harvest of the individual strips. Would the weather hold? It had been a dry spring, and they’d all prayed for rain, but rain now would add nothing to the harvest.
At the noon meal, the steward handed out round dark loaves and bowls of thin soup. This year no one grumbled. Gird ate silently, steadily. The more he could take of the lord’s bounty, the better for his family. Arin’s boy, as a water carrier, could eat with the harvesters this year. He came to sit by Gird, a boy as quiet and shy as Arin had been cheerful and open. Gird wondered if seeing his father die had changed him—but he’d been a quiet baby, for all that.
“Mali’s coming out to bind,” said the boy—Fori, his name was, though they seldom called him by name. He was “Arin’s boy” to the whole village. Gird frowned.
“She should not: she’s too near her time.”
“Ma has the sickness,” said Fori, ducking his head. Gird sighed. Issa loathed fieldwork, and although she was not as good a weaver as his mother had been, she would spend all her time at the loom. Leaving all the other work for Mali, Gird thought—but she also had the sickness, no one could deny it. No one with the sickness could come into the harvest field; throwing up on the first day of harvest was the worst of bad luck. And it was no fault of Fori’s, what Issa did or did not do. But he worried about Mali. Big and strong as she was, every child seemed to take more out of her; she had not looked well this time.
“Make sure she has enough water,” said Gird. Fori nodded. He had not finished his bowl of soup, but sat dangling his hands.
“Eat! You take all you can get, lad.” The boy slurped up the rest of his soup.
“It’s not as good as Mali’s,” he said through a mouthful of bread.
“No, but Mali didn’t have to cook it. It’s not from our stores. When you’re doing the lord’s work, you feed from his bounty: that’s custom.”
Gird followed his own advice, and went back for more. At least the steward wasn’t stinting them on amounts—no one frowned when he picked up another half-loaf of bread and refilled his bowl.
When he was full, he lay back in the shadow of the old fireoak at the field’s corner until the horn blew. The afternoon’s work was always harder: the field seemed to swell with heat, lengthening every selion. Gird was soon back in the rhythm of the work. His mind seemed to hang on every close detail now, unwilling to soar abroad as it had in the morning. His shadow, at first a squat dark figure close beneath him, lengthened with the hours. He was still far ahead of the others, overtaking one after another on their selions, and swinging away beyond them. Yet no one minded: he was, he sensed, their pride as well as his own. Gird Strongarm, they said, grinning as he came past.
On the outer edges of the field, the women and older girls were binding the cut grain into shocks. None of his or Arin’s girls were old enough yet: only a woman who had bled could gather in harvest. But he could see Mali’s peaked hat busy among the others. Some years she worked first among the women, almost as much faster than others as he was. This year, she lagged, slowed by the coming child that made bending difficult.
By dusk, when he could feel the damp coming out, more than half the great field was down. Now the men joined the women in binding the last grain. Again tonight, they would eat the lords’ bread and meat—if there was any meat, Gird thought. Surely there would be. He found Mali, and led her up to the serving line. She moved heavily, and beneath the day’s sunburn, her skin was pale.
There was meat, although the steward’s men doled it out one slice to a loaf of bread. A pottage of beans, cheese, and a wooden cup of ale completed the meal. “No sweet cake?” Gird heard someone ask. The steward’s men said nothing, handing a serving to the next in line.
“I heard the steward tell the cooks they need not kill another sheep—that the great field would be done early enough that there’d be no evening meal tomorrow.” Mali kept her voice low.
“What?” Gird stared at her. “That’s—we can’t be done by noon, and if we work the afternoon, he has to feed us.”
Mali, her mouth full of meat, merely shrugged. Gird tore off a hunk of bread and chewed it, thinking hard. The custom had always been to feed them for any part of a day spent on the lords’ work. When they finished harvest a bit early, they had time for a rest before the meal, even a bit of singing. He worked his way through the bean porridge, which lacked the flavor of Mali’s, and wondered what could be done.
As it happened, Mali was not the only one to have heard the steward’s words. The men gathered cautiously after dark, in the lane near Gird’s cottage.
“Not fair,” said Teris. “We work faster, and they punish us—”
“So we can work slow, if Gird can hold back,” said Amis’s uncle.
Gird felt himself flushing. “It’s not my fault,” he said.
“No one said it was. But if being fast loses us a feast, maybe being slow will get it back.”
“ ’Course, he’s already told the cooks,” said Amis. “Might be even if he has to feed us, it won’t be much. No meat, anyway. And he’d be angry with us. Is it worth that?”
“Where’s Garig?” asked Pakul. “What does he think?”
“Garig’s in the steward’s back pocket,” said someone too softly to make out.
“We can’t do aught without him,” said Gird. “It’s not fair, I’ll stand to that, and do what I can, but we need Garig. It’s only he can speak for us to the steward, anyway.”
“I’ll say what I can,” Garig sighed, though, and Gird was sure he’d come back with nothing. “The steward—the steward’s told me some of it.”
“Of what?”
“What’s gone wrong. There’s a place—somewhere far off, I don’t know—where the lords come from, back when they come. It’s where they traded, over the mountains. It’s gone.”
“Gone? How can a place be gone?”
“Raided, I suppose, like a town the nomads have burned. Anyway, the lords got gold and jewels that way, and now they don’t.”
“So what’s that got to do with us?” asked Teris. “We need to eat, same as always, and it’s always been if we do the work on the lord’s field, he feeds us.”
“The count’s squeezing him,” said Garig. “So he’s squeezing us—that’s the truth of it. He has to send more—”
“We can’t.” Mutters of agreement with that, a low voiced growl. “Might’s well join the Stone Circle—”
“None o’ that!” Garig’s voice rang out. “We’ll have none o’ that talk here. D’you want the guards down on us? They’re outlaws, no better than brigands, that bunch.”