And that was all the reckoning I got. Them that had loved me before loved me twice as hard now, for Jarter told the story so I was the hero of it. When all hope was lost and Half-Ax was triumphing over us, along I came like Dandrake whelming the ten thousand. “They run then, oh yes. They run from our Spinner into the fire and into the chokers. They was more scared of her than they was of death its own self.”
I got cheers in the gather-ground, bows and courtesies as I passed. And when I came into the Count and Seal the first time after that fight, everybody in the room stood up at once.
At night, in bed with Jon, I railed at all this. “It’s like there’s nobody can see my face for the light that shines out of my arse. I do three things wrong for every one I do that’s right. Only it seems like the wrong things is invisible.”
“I guess people see what they want to. My aunt Fer still hates you if that’s any comfort.”
“It’s not.”
Jon stroked my cheek with one finger, a thing he did oftentimes to gentle me into sleep. “What do people look for out of a story, Spin? You told enough of them to know.”
I thought a moment, then answered. “They look for it to have a good shape and end where it’s supposed to.”
“And what shape do you think they want for this story, of when little Mythen Rood went up against mighty Half-Ax? What shape, and what ending?”
“I hear what you’re saying, Jon. You don’t need to hit me over the head with it.”
He gave me a hug and a few kisses. “Then I’ll forebear,” he said. “But you know I’m right. You got to be their story right now because you’re the best one they got. My mother sees it, and she plays to it strong. Nobody sings glory-to-Spinner louder than she does, so you can trust she sees some good use in it.”
We lay quiet a little while.
“Is there really a light that shines out of your arse?”
“Jon!”
“We could save on candles, is all I mean. But I’ll need to keep my eyes shut when I—”
“Enough! I won’t be joked out of this.”
And I wasn’t. Not altogether. But Jon had other things to try beside jokes, and our talk ended there.
44
So then there was the Still Summer, as we came to call it – the warmest anyone could remember. Day after day of heat that fell down out of the sky like a hammer, until everyone felt too heavy to move and too dull to speak.
It was a trying time. Hunters couldn’t stir abroad by day for fear of being crushed and eaten by the trees. You would think nights might be safer, but with every bird and beast and bug shut in their holes and nests until the sun went down, the woods by night were a boiling of blood and claws. We dug deep into our stores, and found all the ways to cook a turnip or a potato that there are.
In other ways, though, the weather favoured us. The Peacemaker left us well alone all that while. The defeat of his red tally, with not a woman or man spared, must have been a bitter gall to him, but not even he could march an army twenty miles under cloudless skies. He had got to leave us to season a little, whether he liked it or not.
We used the time to plan and drill just like we did before, except that Jon was not to be seen any more on the gather-ground, training with Jarter and Morrez.
“So what are you up to, Rampart Breakfast?” I asked him.
“I’m working with the knives.”
“Kay’s knives?”
He nodded, but didn’t offer me any more than that. I knew he had his own little tally that he took away from the gather-ground into the broken house. Athen Woodsmith, Veso Shepherd, Tam Baker, his own sister Lari and a few others besides. I had asked him oftentimes what they were up to in there, but he only bid me wait and see. Lari wouldn’t tell me either. “There might be a new Rampart in Mythen Rood before long” was all she’d say, with a smile that was all I-know-a-secret.
And indeed, as far as Ramparts went, we were looking to increase our store. We had hoped to gain some new tech for ourselves by gathering up the weapons our enemies had used, and Catrin sent out searchers many times before the clear weather forced her to stop. They came back each time with empty hands: the chokers and the fire had swallowed up everything.
But we had the scatter-gun and the rifle, and we had new ideas too, having learned from our mistakes.
It was Catrin who had the idea of testing how far away Challenger could sniff out tech. We knew his magic mirror could only see for a hundred strides or so, but just before we came up against the Half-Ax tally he had told us how many weapons they had with them. He had a sense for tech that was different from seeing. So could he not tell us when tech was coming and which direction it was coming from? “Jemiu Woodsmith’s bird boxes served us well in this fight,” Catrin said to me in closed counsel. “They probably made the difference between winning and losing, when all’s said. If we could do this, it would be taking that idea and sharpening it to a better point.”
Challenger said both yes and no. It was something he was supposed to be able to do – in his core capability is how he said it – but the things inside him that were meant to do it were not as good now as they were when they were first made. “You’d have to extend my range. An antenna could be constructed. But it would not be easy with the equipment you have here.”
“How would we do it?”
“You’d make a mast out of ferrous metal, as long as possible, and set it on top of your tallest building. You would need to connect the mast to a pick-up and an amplifier unit on the ground by means of wires. I can give you those components, but the mast and the wires you would need to make for yourselves.”
“Our highest house is Rampart Hold by a long way.”
“And how tall is that?”
“I don’t know for sure. If I was to guess, thirty strides or so.”
“Then the mast would need to be another thirty strides in length at the very least.”
I told this to Catrin and Perliu and Fer, and then I told it again in the Count and Seal. A share-work as big as this one had got to be voted on because it would touch everyone. Iron we had in plenty. There was a mine over by Old Big-Hand stream that we worked in Winter, and it gave all we could need. But what copper we had we got by trade long since and it stayed in families. Mostly it was cooking pots, with some necklaces and bracelets.
It’s strange what things people will weigh against their own lives. There were some that resented the sacrifice of a pot or a pretty and pulled against it, asking what use it was for us to get that early warning. If Half-Ax was going to come, Half-Ax would come – and if they came in force, our lookouts would see them a long way off with no help needed.
After two or three had said this, Catrin lost her patience. She stood up and faced the room, with her hand on the leather strap of the firethrower to remind everyone there who it was that was talking to them.
“In the fight that just passed,” she said, turning to look all of them in their faces, “Half-Ax come within a breath or two of ripping us out of the world. It was as close as a word is to a whisper. Jemiu Woodsmith’s bird boxes give us a good hour’s warning, where the lookout in the far tower might of give us five minutes or ten. If we hadn’t got that longer lease, or even if we’d stopped to piss along the way, we wouldn’t be talking here now.”