Zaranda unfastened Crackletongue's scabbard from her belt, took the sheathed weapon by the hilt and held it up. "Let's test it, shall we, you and I? Somebody get him a quarterstaff."
This was done, and in a moment the two stood facing each other before the uneven ranks of villagers. Bord scowled. "You have a sword," he said. "That isn't fair."
"My sword shall remain sheathed," Zaranda said. "That makes it no more than a club—one with shorter reach than that stick of yours."
"How do I know you won't use magic on me?"
Zaranda sighed and resisted the urge to look around at her own party. She had said nothing of magic to the villagers.
"I swear that I will not."
"Cross your heart and hope to die?"
Zaranda did so. Reluctantly Bord braced his legs wide apart, and took up stance holding his staff two-handed before his belly.
Zaranda tapped his left cheek with her scabbarded sword.
Bord frowned and whipped the staff up and around in a belated counter. Zaranda tapped his right cheek.
"I'm quicker and more skillful," she said matter-of-factly, "and that's twice over that you're dead. Had enough?"
The young man's vast face turned red. He slid both hands to one end of the staff and aimed a whistling blow at Zaranda, who ducked back easily out of harm's way. Bellowing anger, he aimed a fearsome overhand stroke at her; she effortlessly deflected it into the dirt with the flat of her blade. He cocked the staff back over his shoulder for another blow. She poked him in the belly. He sat down in the dust with a vast thump.
Zaranda placed the tip of her scabbard on the ground and rested both hands on Crackletongue's pommel. Sev-eral of Bord's comrades helped him to his feet. The last that was seen of the miller's son that day was him totter-ing off for his hut with a supporter beneath each arm.
"It's not just a life," Zaranda said to her friends out of the corner of her mouth, "it's an adventure."
Puffing and scowling with effort, the strapping vil-lage lad managed to draw the short bow halfway to his ear. With a yell of triumph, he gave the string a final tug and released. Then he stared dumbly at the arrow, which was still in place, clasped against the bow-staff with one finger.
"You pulled the string out of the nock that time, Er-nico," Zaranda said gently. "Now, try it again, and take your time."
Stillhawk, his darkly handsome face inscrutable—Zaranda envied him his long practice at showing no emotion—helped the boy nock another arrow and tried to steady his arm as he pulled on the string.
Straining and trembling, Ernico got the bow half-drawn again and loosed at the hay bale twenty paces away. The arrow arced high and fell to earth two-thirds of the way to the target.
The mercenaries, now sitting on spare hay bales off to the side, set up a great hooting and sardonic ap-plause at the effort: "Ho there, lad! Is your arm made of whey? That bow's a toy; my five-year-old niece could draw it full!"
The boy blushed until his prominent ears looked ready to burst into flame. He snatched away a fresh arrow prof-fered by Stillhawk from the quiver on his back, nocked it, heaved with all his might to draw. Puffing, blowing, straining until his whole upper body shook and his face turned purple, Ernico succeeded in drawing it almost to his ear.
"That's it!" yelled one of Balmeric's men, but another jeered and said, "A silver piece he can't get it to his ear."
Ernico grimaced horribly, yanked the string the rest of the way back and, uttering a terrible yell, released.
His final effort had shut his eyes and pivoted him halfway round, however, so that he had come to bear squarely upon the onlooking crossbowmen. They scat-tered like quail an eyeblink before the arrow buried it-self in the bale where one of them had been sitting a moment before.
"Crossbows," Zaranda said to no one in particular, as the mercenaries picked themselves up off the ground and Ernico danced around with the bow held victori-ously above his head. "We need to get them crossbows. Anyone can shoot a crossbow."
"Platoon, forward!" roared Shield of Innocence.
Like a vast, untidy, many-legged beast, the group of recruits lurched to its feet and into a stumbling run across the furrows of a dormant barley field. Shield scrutinized them with a critical eye, his shadow long, his lumpy form looking somehow majestic against the eye of the setting sun.
Zaranda watched from the side. The troops dashed forward for all they were worth, clutching sharpened sticks to their breasts in lieu of spears. A particularly gawky girl put a foot wrong and went sprawling. The others rushed over her like an avalanche.
Zaranda didn't even wince. Despite the fact that unidentified riders had been glimpsed in the distance, apparently surveying the unprecedented goings-on in Tweyar, she had been sleeping soundly. She no longer heard those horrid insinuating whispers whenever she shut her eyes. Life was good. At least in comparison to what it had been in Zazesspur.
"Platoon— down!" Shield bellowed, voice great as a thunderclap. The recruits all went face first in the plowed earth as if they'd been snagged by trip spells.
He has a talent for this sort of thing, doesn 't he? Still-hawk signed—reluctantly, Zaranda thought.
"Indeed he does," Zaranda said. Which was fortunate. For all his fighting talent and knowledge of warcraft, Stillhawk was hampered as an instructor by the fact he couldn't speak. Besides, the type of fighting he was most accustomed to was a stealthy, solitary art, demanding the utmost skill and concentration, and not really suitable for the village recruits to study at this stage of their training. Farlorn was a master swordsman, and no mean hand with a bow himself. With his bard's tongue, he could impart his knowledge more readily than any of them, but he tended to grow bored and wander off along the riverbank, picking wildflowers and composing new songs, or inveighing the village girls with the songs and bouquets those walks produced. Zaranda, with extensive military experience, could plan a campaign or a battle, inspire troops, extemporize and lead an action in the heat of combat. But she had little enough grasp of how to train untried, peaceful folk.
Shield, it seemed, knew just how to go about it. De-manding but not demeaning, stern but evenhanded, he was adept at getting the volunteers to give their best without driving them too hard. And once they got over their instinctive fear of a gigantic orc warrior, the recruits had taken to Shield as if he had been born among them.
Shield ran them back and forth across the field, jerk-ing them up and down like marionettes. The exercise was meant to toughen them, to get them used to operat-ing as a unit, and to accustom them to handling weap-ons. At length the orog ordered them to stand and looked to Zaranda. She clapped her hands and called out, "Well done, everybody! Let's head for home."
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 farm-ing folk? Why not simply protect us yourselves?"
"It'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 wrin-kles 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."