I was happy to do it. My eyes was already closing without me deciding to shut them. It had been a short day, but I guess I was only just come back from drowning and still had some resting up to do. Monono sung me to sleep with “You Are the Everything”. She got as far as the part about the stillness that never ends, and it felt like I went straight there.
Spinner
10
After we fought off the Half-Ax soldiers at Calder’s ford, we came back in triumph to Mythen Rood. We didn’t come empty-handed either. We brought two new weapons, though at first we couldn’t use them. We also brought the living chariot called Challenger and two soldiers of Half-Ax who we had taken alive.
We were hailed as heroes. The gather-ground rang to our names as we climbed down from Challenger’s wide, half-rusted flanks into the arms of them that loved us. In my case that was Haijon Vennastin, that had been Haijon Rampart but now was only Vennastin again, after his name-tech was destroyed by the monster and renegade, Koli Faceless. Haijon was so glad to see me alive that he cried all over me as he held me, and said my name a hundred times. Most of them was said into my hair, and was too muffled for anyone to hear. But I felt the murmur of his lips as a buzzing on my skin, and my legs went to water.
“You’re well!” he whispered. “You’re whole!”
Then he saw that I was not, for I fainted in his arms and was gone out of the world for a while.
None of us came away from that fight without a wound. Mine was high up on my side, under the hollow of my shoulder. A Half-Ax bolt had gone by me there, gouging a little furrow in my flesh the way a ploughshare will with soil that’s caked and clayed. The scar it left was ugly, but I was happy for it. If the bolt had gone a little lower and a little way to the left, the baby that was in me would not have lived to be born. The world would have come to her before she was ready to meet it, and ended her.
Catrin Vennastin, that was Haijon’s mother and our Rampart Fire, was worse hit and longer mending. The bolt that hit her passed right through her, leaving a small hole where it entered and a much bigger one where it came out. She would have died if not for Challenger, who carried in his turret a little box he called a first day kit, full of wondrous medicines of the before-times. The jars and bottles had stood inside the first day kit since our mothers’ mothers’ time and before, but they had stood unopened. Nobody had ever broke the seal on them, and the medicines were as strong as they had ever been. They helped Catrin’s skin to heal over, and warded her from the sickness and poisoning that oftentimes come in the wake of a wound. It was a long while before she was able to rise and walk again, and she was never as strong or as quick as she had been before, but she was not lost to us.
While she was abed, it fell to me to be Rampart Fire, or at least to play the part as best I could. I never looked to sit in such a high place, but Catrin had given the firethrower over to me in the heat and hurt of battle. Now I had got to carry it until she came to take it back. That meant I had got to lead our Count and Seal, that decided all things in Mythen Rood, and speak in its name when such speaking was needed.
“You can practise on me,” Jon said, “before you stand up and speak in chamber. I’ll tell you what it sounds like.”
“I don’t need telling though. I know I don’t sound nothing like your mother when she does it.”
“That’s true.” He put his arm round me, which was not easy now my belly was rounding out so much, and kissed me on the cheek. “And dead god forbid you try. Sounding like your own self will do well enough.”
And so it did for some, but not for all. Fer Vennastin, that was Catrin’s sister, was very far from happy at how all this had fallen out. She had her own strong sense of what was right and what was not. What was right was Vennastins in Rampart Hold. What was wrong was anyone else being there, or casting any kind of shadow over the great and lasting glory that was her family.
So the two of us fell to arguing. Whatever I proposed, she had got to speak against, whether it was great things or small. Most matters that come before the Count and Seal are easy to decide. Should we mend the fence this year, and should it be a share-work? Yes to both. Do we need to dig a new well? Yes again, for the old one dries up in fine weather. And much more of the same. But nothing was easy now. Fer had got her teeth into me and was biting down hard. “My sister being absent, I got to say this in her stead…” It was not about the fence, or the well, or any of that kit and cumber. Her misliking me was rooted in mistrust, for she thought I was out to steal what was hers.
She had good reason to think it. Vennastins had ruled Mythen Rood for generations, and they did it with lies and trickery. The lies were old. It was not Catrin and Fer that told them first, nor even Perliu their father. It all went back to Bliss and Mennen Vennastin, and past them to Vennastins dead so long we didn’t even remember their names. And my quarrel being with the lies, there was nothing to stop me and Fer being friends. Nothing, that is, except me sitting in a place she thought belonged to her family alone.
The one thing we didn’t argue about was Half-Ax. They had come at us once, and were almost certain to come again. We had only survived this first attack by a hair and a hope, as they say. We needed to be ready for the Peacemaker’s next sally if we were not to be whelmed.
We talked endlessly in the Count and Seal about what was to be done and who was most fit to do it. Most agreed the threat was real, and only argued about the best answer. Some few wanted to pretend there was no danger and carry on living the way we always did. They seemed to think that changes could not come if you turned your face from them.
And then there were some that were full of fear but looked to spend it out in some other coin, such as anger. We should beat a vengeance out of the Half-Ax fighters we took prisoner, they said. They had killed some of ours, and there had got to be a reckoning made. There were even some that said they should be hanged.
The prisoners had been locked in the Underhold and would be kept there until their fates were decided. Their names were Sil Hawk and Morrez Ten-Taken, and though I talk about them in the same breath they were not the same at all. Sil was a grey and grizzled woman, about as old as my father was when he died and about as tough as a tree root. I doubted Morrez had even seen his seventeenth name-day.
It fell to me to step in between them and the village, which was not an easy thing to do. How do you bid people be patient when they’re angry and grieving? Half-Ax had killed three from Mythen Rood, though we had offered them no insult. Half-Ax fighters had struck down Rampart Fire, and broke Jarter Shepherd’s arm. They had hurt and harried us when we were working for the good of all, burning out choker blossom before it seeded.
“Them two got to die for what they done,” Jarter Shepherd said, standing up in full session. And Lune Cooper said aye, and Gendel Stepjack said aye. These ayes carried weight, for all three of them had been in the fight at the river ford and taken hurt there. So when I said no, I had to say it soft and come at it sidelong.
“There’ll be punishment,” I said. “There’s got to be, and I wouldn’t stand in the way of it. But I’d ask you to mind two things. One is the Half-Ax fighters we left dead on the river bank, crushed under Challenger’s wheels. The Peacemaker lost more than we did that day.”