We said goodbye to each other twice, the first time in the bedroom and the second on the gather-ground. I’ll say nothing more about the first farewell, or what shape it took. Only that afterwards we lay a long while in each other’s arms, with his head against my shoulder and our legs still tangled together.
“Look you come back to me unbroken,” I said. I held up my left hand, where a needle had bit me when I was a child and took my pointing finger off. “If we keep losing pieces of ourselves, it’s a bad thing for our marriage. It’s like we’re breaking our pair-pledge really slowly.”
Jon kissed my scar, and held it to his cheek. “If I’m broke in pieces, Spin,” he said, “every piece will find its own way back to you.”
“I’d still like you better if you held all together, Jon. A man is like a table in that regard. He’s less use if he wobbles.”
I was making these foolish jokes only to keep from crying. I wanted to give him memories of me that would make his way easier, not harder.
While he dressed, I brought Vallen from her crib. She was already awake, but not crying. She had been waiting there with her sweet blue eyes open in the dark, as if she sensed something was happening that might deserve her attention. I put her in her father’s arms. He kissed her and rocked her, speaking such nonsense as people always speak to babies. Vallen didn’t offer any opinion, but she grabbed his finger when he stroked her face with it, and held on fast, and by and by begun to chew on it.
“Her teeth is already coming in,” Jon said marvelling. “Is this a baby or a bear you give birth to.”
“I don’t think I ever tumbled with a bear,” I said. “If I did, I forget. She’s most likely a baby.”
We leant in around her and kissed again, holding her in between us like a promise. Then I wrapped her in a shawl while Jon strapped on his belt and his knives and checked the hang of them. He was a fine sight, my soldier husband. I was glad for him, that he had found his pride and his purpose again. But I wished with all my heart it had been another pride, a different purpose.
Our second goodbye was short, and public. We both kept our brave faces on. Jon squeezed my hand one last time and kissed Vallen on the cheek, then he went to join his tally. They gave him a quick, sharp hail as he came, clapping their heels together and putting their right hands to their own belts, where their daggers hung ready to their hands. They all were dressed alike in the new leathers I had made for them. Mid-brown calfskin, with a natural mottle left in so they’d be hard to see against a forest dark. All of Rampart Knife had thanked me kindly for the gift, but they’d made their own changes since. On the right sleeve of each jacket, burned in with great care and the charcoal black made darker still with tea and iron salt, there was an upright dagger.
As Jon took his place at the head of the line, I joined the crowd that had come to cheer Mythen Rood’s new heroes on their way. We walked them out of gates, banging drums and pans and wash-tubs to scare away any animals that might be out hunting in the near woods. Vallen didn’t like the noise, but even now she didn’t cry. She only shook her fists like she was coming to the last dregs of her patience and warning us what might come of it if she run out altogether.
The gate faced east of north, so Rampart Knife would have to walk almost halfway around the village before they came to a way that took them west. We walked with them some of that way until a turn of the path took them past the stake-blind, out of the half-outside and into the world. Then we stayed a little longer to watch them out of sight. Most of the village was with us, but I felt alone as I turned and walked back to the gates. I wasn’t even going home. I had promised Jon I’d stay in Rampart Hold until he got back, so Ban could help me look after our baby.
“Well, they got one piece of luck,” Jarter Shepherd said, looking up at the sky. Clouds were rolling in from the west, thick as cream and dark as a bruise. We wouldn’t see the sun today.
But any fortune we got that way had two edges to it. What speeded Rampart Knife would speed Half-Ax too, stealing away the last few days we had to make ourselves ready.
57
Two days passed with nothing to report, either of Half-Ax or of Rampart Knife. For us they were busy days indeed – days of running straight from one thing to another like blue-arsed flies, and barely lying down to sleep before the tocsin woke us for yet more work. The sky stayed heavy but the storm didn’t break. We knew we didn’t have long. Challenger’s magic mirror told us that much.
Jemiu put aside the database a while and put her apron on again. The wooden platforms – three times twenty of them – were finished, dragged to the fence and put up in place. Now we could keep up a watch in all quarters, and if Half-Ax attacked us from any side we could give some answer. This was a great labour – a share-work for the whole village. I sat it out, for my job was to watch the magic mirror and give report.
The mirror showed Half-Ax drifting towards us as slow as a cloud. It also let me see how Rampart Knife was faring. Jon was carrying the clock radio, not because it would do them any earthly good but because it was waked tech and showed on Challenger’s scanner. As long as they had it with them, we could keep a watch on their progress. Whenever I could spare a moment from the Count and Seal, I spent it inside the battle wagon staring into the mirror. It helped that Vallen was still nursing and needed to feed every three or four turns of the glass. I took her inside Challenger to feed, and I watched the mirror as she suckled on me.
Rampart Knife was still moving, still alive – or some of them were. They were coming nearer and nearer to that big cluster of tech that was coming from the west. It didn’t seem to pay them any heed as they approached, for it never slowed or turned or speeded up.
By the afternoon of the second day, they were within a mile of it. That was the closest they got. I tried to imagine what was happening around that still red dot that was my husband. Maybe he was watching the westerners, whoever they might be, through a spyglass. Or maybe he had made a base and sent some of his tally on ahead while he guarded their backs. Maybe the clock radio had fallen out of his pocket and was lying on a forest path while they forged on not knowing they had lost it. Maybe beasts or trees had fed on all seven of them, and spit the tech out as having no savour. There was no way of telling.
In the evening, the dot moved again, not west but east. I gave a sob of joy to see it. They were coming home. Some of them, at least, were coming home. And surely my heart or the world or something would have told me if Jon wasn’t one of them.
I told the news to Catrin. It was given out in the Count and Seal and on the gather-ground: Rampart Knife were on their way back with the answer they were sent to find. There was good hope that they would reach our gates long before Half-Ax arrived, for Half-Ax had slowed their advance. We wondered a little at that caution, but not overmuch. Our enemy’s tally was in Calder now, and Calder had bit them twice before. They had good reason to be careful.
We watched the mirror and we hoped. It would be close, but we looked to see our friends, our lovers, our sons and daughters safe within gates before the next danger threatened. They might bring news that would save us all.
On the third, day a strange quiet fell over the village. We all walked as if on eggshells. All that we could do by way of preparation was done, and there was nothing to fill our time but waiting. The red dots closed on us, from east and west. Our one little beacon drew closer too. So slow. So slow. I imagined Jon when he was a boy of twelve Summers racing against Koli Woodsmith – the two of them so much quicker than the rest of us that no one else bothered to run against them. I saw in my inward eye the wind whipping my boy’s hair across his face as he ran endlessly towards me.