“The Peacemaker can better abide it!” Issi Tiller shouted. That was most likely true. Back when we still had trade with Half-Ax, they were ten or twenty times bigger than we were. It didn’t seem likely they had shrunk much since.
I nodded. “I don’t doubt he can, Issi. But the second thing is this. We don’t know why Half-Ax attacked us, but we do know what’s happened to others that stood against the Peacemaker. To Lilboro and Temenstow. We don’t want what happened there to come to us.”
There was more shouting to the tune of what we would show the Peacemaker if he ever stuck his head in Calder Valley again. I would have let it come and go, for it was just noise, but Jon was less patient. “I got to ask,” he said, when I called on him to speak, “if people here is asleep and dreaming. You heard what Spinner said about the fight at Calder ford. What Jarter said, and Gendel. The fighters they met was just a raiding party. A red tally, like we used to call up our own selves in times gone by. And even that little group had two Ramparts in it. Two fighters with name-tech we hadn’t ever seen before. We beat them, aye, but it went near to being the other way about. Next time the Peacemaker will come in his strength, and the tech he brings will be the fiercest he’s got.”
I gave Jon a thankful look as he sat down, for he had landed me where I wanted to be. I picked up again, over the muttering and murmuring. “I got to agree with all that,” I said, “and with what Issi spoke before. The Peacemaker can stand to lose a whole lot more than we got. How many are we, all told? Not just hale women and men, but all of us. Children too, and them that’s too old or too sick to fight. Two hundred is a close guess, I’d say.” I looked all round the room, taking my time about it and letting them see me do it. “The Peacemaker could throw two hundred at us and lose every last one of them. Then the next day he’d just send two hundred more.”
A hush fell over the room. That was a thought that scared and cast down everyone there. “How can we win then?” someone asked in a voice almost too low to hear.
“We win by being cleverer than they are. We win by thinking it out, harder than we ever thought before, and playing every trick we got. Well, two of them tricks is the prisoners. If we kill them instead of talking to them, it’s like we’re shutting our ears to something that might save us.”
Fer stood up. She was right next to me in the Middle Round, along with her father Perliu. The three of us were the only Ramparts Mythen Rood could show right then, Catrin being still abed and not even awake most of the time. “What Spinner Tanhide forgot to tell you,” Fer said, “is that the Half-Ax filth aren’t saying anything. They cleave to the Peacemaker and the oaths they made to him. I stand with Spinner this far: we need to know what them two can tell us. But we’ve scant time, and we won’t get nothing out of them by playing riddles. We should go at them with hot iron and hard blows. Wring the truth out of them a drop at a time. And if they die while we’re doing it, we’re saved the trouble of a hanging.”
There were some that cheered this, but there were far more that shook their heads. Fer had overreached herself, as she oftentimes did, letting her own sourness show through in her words so people found them hard to swallow even if they agreed with her.
“We could do that,” I said. “And what would we be if we did? We might as well all pack our bindles and walk to Half-Ax if we’re going to do as Half-Ax does.”
Fer gave me a glare that would have stripped paint off a wall. “We don’t need to walk to Half-Ax,” she said. “We only need to wait, and Half-Ax will walk to us. The question, Spinner Tanhide, is what they’ll find when they get here. I’m agreeing with you that we got to put these two to the question. I’m only saying we should press them hard enough to make sure they answer true. And Rampart Remember agrees with me. I can see it in his face.”
We both turned to look at Perliu. He looked right back at us, and he didn’t seem happy to have his name waved around like that. He spoke up in a voice that was as thin and high as the creaking of a door hinge. “I didn’t say one thing either way. And if you could read my thoughts in my face, Rampart Arrow, I think you’d blush at what you seen there.”
He stood up. It took him some time, for he had been sick almost to death and was only come half the way back again. He put his hand on my shoulder. “This is what I think,” he said. “This woman here, Spinner Tanhide, turned a rout into a victory. She brung Catrin home, and three more besides that all owe their lives to her. She brung us the Challenger. If we got Half-Ax prisoners to question, it’s because of her. Because of her courage and her strength.”
“That’s the dead god’s truth!” Jarter Shepherd shouted from the back of the room.
Perliu paused a while for breath, and I think to swallow some bile that had come into his mouth. “Spinner has earned our trust,” he said. “If she wants to go about this another way, I say we should let her do it. Let’s give the prisoners into her keeping, and see what comes.” Fer made to speak again, her face flushed red, but I got in quicker. I wanted the vote cast now, while Perliu’s words were ringing in every ear.
“I’ll bide your choosing,” I said to the whole chamber, the whole village. “Be it aye or nay, tell me now. Will the prisoners be mine to work on? Who wills it?”
Hands went up. Shirew Makewell counted them, and called the count in my favour.
“That count was brung in too quick,” Fer complained. “I had more to say.”
“And I’m sure you’ll say it, Rampart Arrow,” I answered. “But time’s short, as you reminded us, and there’s much to do. Best to spare speech and get to work.”
11
Sil Hawk blinked in the daylight. But it was not the dark of below-ground that made her weak and unsteady on her feet. It was not just her wounds either: thanks to Challenger’s first day kit, they were already halfway healed. She flexed her arms, that were tied behind her back. The flesh was starting to hang loose on them. She had been a big and a heavy woman when we took her as our prisoner. She was not nearly so heavy now.
“You’re still not eating,” I said.
Sil Hawk didn’t answer.
“You’re like to make yourself ill, Dam Hawk. You can’t thrive if you take no food.”
The Half-Ax woman scowled. “Don’t call me dam,” she said. “I’m a soldier, not a fucking fishwife. And I got no use for your false-faced kindness.”
We were in Rampart Hold, in the room that was called the library. This was where I sat every morning and some way into the afternoon, dealing with Count and Seal business. I chose the library because it was big and light and beautiful – a place that spoke of the greatness of the before-times and bid us be humble in the face of it. I was sitting on a bench seat that was a part of the window, and Jon was by my side. I had offered Perliu a place alongside us, but he was still too weak to sit for long. He seemed to grow frailer with each day, and I wondered if his illness had ever truly left him.
Jarter Shepherd and Shirew Makewell were also there, Jarter to guard us against any violence the Half-Ax fighter might offer and Shirew to tend her if weakness and starvation overtook her while we were talking.