But for now they sat on the gather-ground and did nothing, except maybe to raise up hopes that were bound to be cast down again.
Six of them were like the thing that Koli stole and showed off at my wedding – silver boxes small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, that were made to sing songs and play music. The people of the before-times had been so rich they could use their tech not just for weighty things but to give them pleasure in an idle moment. I wondered: did they know they lived in Edenguard, or did they dream of a higher Heaven still?
We had a rule about tech, that only Ramparts should touch it. We could stretch that rule a little for Haijon, who had tested as a Rampart but now had no name-tech, but Fer was determined to let in nobody else. So it was left to the three of us – Perliu refused – to walk up and down the tables picking up each piece of tech in turn to see if it would wake for us. We knew this had nothing to do with us being Ramparts. It depended only on the tech itself. Some of it had buttons to press or switches to slide, or a place you were meant to touch to bring it to life. Some of it had nothing, being meant to wake at the sound of a voice. The database gave us what help it could, telling us where to put our hands, what words to say and which tech might be dangerous if we handled it wrong. All was to no avail though. None of the tech did anything, even after a whole day out in the sun.
“We’ll give it another day then,” Jon said at last. “You said they’d be slow to charge up at first, Spin. Maybe we just got to wait.” He had one of the cutters in his hand as he said it, and he was looking at it with a sad longing. If we could get a cutter to work for him he would be Rampart Knife once more.
So we waited and tried again, but the second day was no better than the first.
Late on the third day, when the sun had almost touched the top of the fence, Jon picked up a box that was no bigger than the database, but square where the database was long. It had been silver once, but now was mostly black with the silver flaked away. It had a smaller square space inside it that was shiny like glass and when Jon picked it up this smaller square lit up.
Jon gave a yell and waved the box in the air. Fer and me came running up to join him and a few people that were standing on the gather-ground watching us crowded round too. The little window in the just-waked tech was a kind of glowing grey. The tech was crackling and grumbling to itself like frogs in a pond.
“Scan it,” I told the database, holding it close to the new tech. “Tell us what this thing is.”
“It’s a clock radio.”
“And what does it do?”
“It tells the time.”
“The time?” Jon frowned and looked around. “It’s just before lock-tide. Why does that need telling?”
“And it picks up radio signals broadcast on various wavelengths. The crackling is because it’s not tuned to a station.”
We took it away with us to the Hold to give it a closer look, but it never did more than light up its little window and make that crackling noise. Jon was for throwing it away, but I set it by, thinking we might yet find a use for it. And it was a hopeful sign, at least. If one thing could wake, others could too.
The weather stayed clear anyway, so we kept on bringing up the tech day after day, in hope some other thing in that whole great sprawl might stir to life. Meanwhile the sun brought all the troubles it always does. The whole forest was awake, the chokers pummelling each other and anything else that moved so the crashing and thrashing made it hard to speak and be heard. Our wood-catchers and hunters had to stay inside the gates. Animals of the deep woods, fleeing the waked trees, came into the half-outside where we had to fight them more often. The shadows of hunting knifestrikes fell on our houses. Swarms of needles boiled like a broth against our fence. Nothing was safe, and nowhere was quiet.
The wind was out of the west, bringing the big tumbling weeds called spinshanks to fetch up at the base of the fence where they dug in with their little barbed stems and anchored themselves firm. Spinshanks were infested with tiny biting flies that caused all manner of harm, so they had got to be burned out as quick as they came.
Then the wind got up stronger, throwing fine dust in our eyes so it was a torment to be out of doors. But the work in the fields didn’t stop – there was hay and silage to be made, and the crops in the high fields to be watered and husbanded. All this along with the training of our own red tally, which Jarter Shepherd had undertaken. Jarter had fought at Calder ford, and was the fiercest of us after Catrin Vennastin her own self. She held her lessons on the gather-ground each day, and it was an open share-work for all who could to train with her. Jon was one that didn’t miss a lesson.
“I had a good thought,” he told me, when he come back all hot and stinking from a long spell of running and grappling and swinging staves.
“Tell me when you’re in your bath,” I said.
“Only if you get in with me.”
I cradled my great belly and laughed. “There won’t be room for the three of us.”
He told me while I warmed the water and poured it in on him. “We’re used to trusting in our tech when we fight,” he said.
“Of course!”
“But do we trust to it too much?”
“Would you rather we prayed to Dandrake, Jon?”
“Hear me out, Spin. We’re used to trusting in our tech because it’s always worked for us. It’s true our store is small, but our fights have been small too. There wasn’t much that the firethrower and bolt gun couldn’t cope with.”
“And the cutter,” I said, and then was sorry I said it. The cutter had been Jon’s name-tech, so he stopped being a Rampart when it was lost. It was a thing that made him sad to think on, but this time he didn’t seem to pay it any mind. “And the cutter, aye. But that proves my point.”
“What’s your point, Jon?”
“We got tech for fighting. Our other weapons is made mostly for hunting, and they’ll do well enough for that. But maybe we could try changing some of them so they’ll do better in the kind of skirmish you was in at Calder.”
“Change them how? A knife’s got an edge. A cudgel’s got a weighted end. There’s not a lot to work with there.”
“Yeah, there is though. Did you know Kay Hammer can throw a knife and hit his mark at eighty strides?”
“That don’t seem likely.”
“Well, he can. And he’s teaching the rest of us. It’s a knife he made for himself long since, on his father’s forge. It flies out of his hand like a kestrel stoops, and bites like a needle. Now wouldn’t that be something in a fight?”
“Not really. You could only throw it once.”
“But what if Kay and Torri made more of them? What if we had fighters that carried a dozen knives at their belts? Then knives would be like arrows, except that you wouldn’t need a bow to fire them and you could use them at shorter distances.”
I still was not sure I saw the point of such a thing. “A dozen knives is a lot of metal though,” I said.
“These knives is only as long as your thumb.” He held up his thumb to show me, as if I had forgot what that might mean. “They got hardly any handle to them, they’re just a blade with a thickened spine. You could carry twenty or thirty and not feel the weight.”