They trooped back toward the village. An ancient man in a kettle helmet-Zaranda would have sworn it was an actual kettle-cleared his throat for attention. He was by far the oldest of the volunteers, and hadn't a tooth in his head.
"Young mistress," he said, "pardon an old fool for asking a fool's question but-why do you do this?"
"There are no fool's questions, save those not asked," Zaranda said, "but could you be a little more explicit?"
The old man frowned a little at "explicit," but he said, "Why are you trying to make fighters of us farming folk? Why not simply protect us yourselves?"
"If s like the old saying, Grandfather," Zaranda said. "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him his whole life."
The old man frowned in puzzlement until the wrinkles in his face became deep canyons that threatened to swallow his features whole.
"But what," he finally asked, "does all this have to do with fishing?"
Zaranda patted the old man on top of his helmet. "You know, Golban, I bet your wife has ready a pot of beer that's been chilling in the river all day long."
He brightened and stood straighter. "I bet you're right," he said, and set off at speed for home.
At the village outskirts, Zaranda came upon Shield of Innocence sitting in the dust. He had a village toddler on his knee and a pack of others crawling all over his mighty frame. He made a series of ferocious faces at the child he held, rolling his small eyes and opening his tusked mouth alarmingly. The children laughed and laughed in delight.
Zaranda shook her head. "Now I've seen everything," she said to herself. The orog had a talent for more than teaching warcraft, it seemed.
The people of Tweyar had taken Zaranda's party into their homes, while the mercenaries, with some help from the locals, built themselves temporary living quarters. It was the kind of manual labor hired fighters traditionally disdained, but Shield and Stillhawk pitched in. Farlorn lightened the labor by his songs and badinage, though he himself did no work, bards being even more averse to that than warriors. Besides, the soldiers were happy enough for something to do. It was no arduous labor; given that Tethyr's long and temperate summer lay ahead, the quarters consisted of little more than a couple of plank sheds with roofs to spill rain when the two-week wet season arrived. For their part, the villagers were happy enough to help; the structures could be used for storage when the outsiders had moved on.
Zaranda, however, was quartered in a hut whose lone occupant, a widow, had died not long before the company's arrival. She started to head there and almost ran into Chenowyn, standing in the path looking wan.
"Excuse me, child," Zaranda said, feeling a flash of irritation and starting to push past. She had a great many things on her mind, not least of which was the fact that her rapidly dwindling resources, little offset by the meager amounts the villagers were able to pay, could keep her mercenary contingent satisfied for only so long. And, of course, her creditors would scarcely settle for a share of the grain and livestock that were the villagers' main mode of payment. She had to expand her operations soon, yet to succeed she must make a solid start here in Tweyar…
She felt a hand on her arm, turned to see Shield smiling at her in the twilight, tusked and benign. "A moment, Mistress Zaranda," the orog said. "Perhaps you're forgetting the education of someone?"
Zaranda frowned and opened her mouth to lash out. Then she shut her mouth and nodded. "Chenowyn," she said, "I'm sorry. I've been neglecting you."
The girl only looked at her, eyes huge and amber in the gloom. Zaranda smiled and took her shoulder.
"Come along, then. Let's review what you've learned of magic so far in your life. And then I'll start you on some simple spells."
18
Eight days after Zaranda's party came to Tweyar, a bandit gang made good on the prediction uttered by Os-bard's wife.
They struck in the early afternoon. Their intent was to catch the villagers logy with lunch, the traditional Tethyrian noontime siesta, and work beneath the warm sun, then to ride down as many as they could and burn the village, with such other merriment as presented itself. They wanted to provide a striking object lesson for any other village brash enough to try hiring outside protection or organizing a self-defense force.
A score of ragged riders, strung out in crescent formation, found a bare handful of farmers in the fields, and these not far out. The villagers began running as soon as the bandits began cutting like a scythe across the just-planted fields. The riders had no chance of reaching them before they scuttled within the shelter of stout walls of sun-cured mud brick.
"Don't worry!" the chief bandit, a lean, sunburned desperado who wore his blond hair in a scalplock, called to his men. "They'll be eager enough to come out when we pile brush against the walls of their hovels and commence to roast them!"
For good measure several short-bow-armed bandits sent arrows after the scurrying villagers. But the raiders were not true horse archers, skilled in the extraordinarily difficult feat of aiming and hitting a tar-get from the back of a moving mount; that took even more training than learning to draw and accurately shoot a longbow, and any adventure-minded boy or girl of the Dales could tell you that took five years' hard work. They were just horsemen who happened to have bows. They didn't hit anything.
Hooting and brandishing their weapons, the marauders rode through the streets of Tweyar. The field-workers had made good their escape; the bandits had the narrow dirt lanes to themselves. Unmolested, laughing and catcalling, they followed their leader to the well-trodden dirt of the little common before the village hetman's house.
"Ho, Osbard," the bandit chieftain called, "why so coy? Have you some reason to hide your face from old friends?"
Vander Stillhawk rose up from concealment behind the parapet of Osbard's roof and shot the bandit leader through the throat.
As he fell to lie kicking in the khaki dust, Balmeric's crossbowmen, likewise hidden on the village's flat roofs, peppered the raiders with quarrels. Farlorn and Zaranda plied longbows from the houses next to Osbard's.
The bandits wheeled their mounts and fled, leaving seven more of their number unhorsed behind. Two of these lay unmoving where they dropped. The others scrambled up and, clutching at the missiles sticking in| them, tried to scramble after their fellows.
The village doors burst open and the village volunteers rushed forth, waving clubs and hoes and shovels and makeshift spears. Screeching with anger pent-up over years of helplessness, they fell upon the injured bandits, bludgeoning, hacking, stabbing.
Zaranda stood up, letting her longbow hang by her side. She was an indifferent archer at best, and had only taken up a bow to add weight to the initial ambush volley. Stillhawk and the half-elven bard kept up their fire, emptying three more saddles before the bandits escaped into dust and distance. The mercenary crossbow-men set their weapons aside to simply watch. Out on the common, blood flowed.
Fire leapt in the cleared common before Osbard's house. Hand in hand, villagers and several mercenaries danced around it to the merry tune of Farlorn's yarting, considerably the worse for drink. Balmeric reeled over to where Zaranda leaned against the front of the hetman's house, a clay mug of the tasty local beer in hand. "Dogs," he said without heat. "D'you know, Zaranda, they actually think they won today?"
"They'd better," Zaranda said. "It's why I let them finish off the bandits you and your men unhorsed." The mercenary leader's long flexible face warped it-self into a scowl. "Why would you want to encourage these rabble to pump themselves up and rob us of glory?"