What might that be though? they asked. What’s the law in Mythen Rood?
We told them what we could. How each worked for all, and when they could not cope alone called on share-works to fill the gaps. How every woman and man had a vote on what we did, and all votes were counted equal.
Some thought we lied. Most thought we’d opened the door to Edenguard. They voted yes, only half-believing their voices would be counted. It was a kind of pair-pledge. When we went away from there, we left a promise behind us, that we would grow closer together and in the course of time be one thing instead of two. I took heart from that. We had lost much, and come close to losing all. So had they. Perhaps one village made out of two would thrive where each alone would have faltered.
And so it proved. After a few lean years, we began to grow, and now are more numerous than we ever were. It helped that more babies were made, and more of them that were made were dropped alive. This is thanks to Ursala-from-Elsewhere, who comes to us each Spring and Falling Time and plies her trade as she was wont from the belly of a metal horse.
We live on, which is a great blessing. We only ever fought for that one thing, after all.
Third. The road passed right by our gate and kept on going. In its path, great tracts of woodland were levelled. The choker trees have not thrived in the thinned-out forests that were left, and many of our old enemies seem to have found other homes for themselves. The endless coming and going of humankind along the road did not suit them.
Our children grew up to think of Calder as a tiny place indeed. Vallen was not the first to walk that road and visit places we had no names for. She won’t be the last neither. We are in the world now, and the world is bigger and stranger than we ever thought it.
As I said, these three things properly belong to any account of the war. I tell them in their place, and then I stop. But I stop knowing that questions will come, and when they come I answer them as plainly as I can. I’m not shy about rolling other people’s stories into the bigger story. People need to know what was done, and by who. They need to know how their present grows out of this past, or else they’re no more than windblown seeds.
Yes, the battle wagon in the story is the one that sits now on the gather-ground. The one the children deck with garlands on Summer-dance. The ring of flowers around it I sowed myself, and tend myself. It speaks with two voices because two people live in it, Elaine and Challenger, and they are two of my sweetest friends. But they are not always at home. Monono set them free, or cut their tethers as she put it, and sometimes their duty or their fancying take them elsewhere.
Yes, Morrez Frostfend used to be Morrez Ten-Taken, and he was a soldier before he grew that great belly. But you must not ever call him by his old name. He hates it. There was another, Sil Hawk, that lived with us a while, but she left us not long after the Peacemaker fell and never returned. I cannot say what became of her, only that she did not go home to Half-Ax. Ingland is a great vastness. She may have found a place in it where she could thrive, but I don’t believe she would ever have been happy with us.
Yes, the Cup I’m speaking of is Cup Roadbuilder, that’s married to the man with the strange name. Taller Than Trees. It’s not strange at all in the south where he comes from. Some of you will see for yourselves when you go there. And it’s likely that one of their four children will be your guide or tracker if you do, for they all take after their mother in not ever staying still in one place.
Yes, we had a fence around us once. We were afraid of everything outside our gates. And we were right to be afraid, because everything that lived seemed to hate us and wish us harm.
And yes, we had Ramparts. They ruled us by what they said was ancient right, but all their words were lies and all their greatness was pretended. Still, they fought for Mythen Rood when Mythen Rood had need of them, and perhaps in this fashion they washed out their guilt. I can’t say. I’m still trying to wash out mine.
And so they lived, in great peace and plenty, until the end of their days. That’s what they’re waiting for, my listeners, and I offer it where I can – where it’s not a bald-faced lie. The comfort and power of those words is not a thing to be taken lightly.
But there is a part of the story’s ending that I mostly leave out. It’s important, and has a great bearing on what came after, but it confuses too many matters that should be clear. The ending of a story need not be a happy one, when all’s said, but it needs to be understood. It needs to have a right shape, as I said to my Jon that time, and the shape of this happening is harder to discern.
Koli Woodsmith, who we thought our enemy, saved us when we were lost.
He died in doing it.
And then something truly strange happened.
73
After the last Half-Ax soldiers fled or died, a strange silence fell over the battlefield. Those of us who were left alive looked around us as if daylight was a strange thing.
I searched for Jon but didn’t find him. He had been at my side not long since, but now was nowhere to be found. What I found instead was Koli. What was left of him. His body was burnt almost black. His skin was cracked open in many places and the wounds were deep, but there was no blood. It seemed as if his blood had boiled away as steam.
I thought him dead at first, but then I saw his eyes were open. His tongue’s tip touched his teeth as he tried to speak. He had no breath to do it.
“He killed Berrobis.” Catrin’s voice came from behind me and made me turn. She was lying on the ground with one leg bent under her and the other thrown wide. She was burned too, but not as badly as Koli. “I don’t know how, but he killed her with her own weapon.” She pointed to a place beside her, but I saw no body there. Only a puddle of grease that smoked a little, circled with streaks and smears of grey ash.
The tattooed girl came running up, and a little while later Jemiu found her way there too. Their grieving took different courses. The girl yelled out a great stream of curses, many of them new to me. “Why would you die in someone else’s fight?” she shouted. “Especially their fight! They threw you out. Liars and cheats! Fucking… liars. And cheats. And cowards.”
She wound herself down at last with all this hating and fell to her knees beside him. She stayed there with her head bowed and cried a little, though she did not forbear from telling Koli what a fool he was.
Then Jemiu arrived, brought by what news or what instinct I never did find out. When she saw it was her son who lay there, she keened like a madwoman and threw herself down, wringing her hands and saying his name. She tried to stroke Koli’s head, but his flesh and hair came away on her hand and she was obliged to stop.
I stood by, all this while, with a heavy weight of grief and shame settling on me – but since my grief did not compare with theirs, I said nothing and did not burden them with it.
A rumbling noise that shook the ground made me look round. One of the great chariots was coming out of the woods, its blade daubed all across with blood and worse than blood.
“Where’s Koli?” it said to me in that same dreadful voice. “Don’t just stand there! Take me to him!”
I didn’t find any words, but I stood aside so whoever was talking out of the wagon could see where Koli lay.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry. If I’d seen…”