The Half-Ax leader stared. Then she tilted her head on one side, as if staring wasn’t enough to give her a clear look at this woman that was standing in front of her. Of a sudden, blue light that was almost too bright to look at welled out from her. It was only when she raised her hands that I saw it was coming from the bracelets she wore. They were tech, but I couldn’t see what she had done or said to wake them.
“I did you the courtesy of stopping here to talk with you,” Berrobis said. “But I’d ask you to keep a civil tongue. There are right ways to do these things, and wrong ways.” She raised up her arms and thrust them forward so they were on either side of Catrin’s head. Catrin didn’t flinch, although she must have been all but blinded by that bright glare. Maybe she closed her eyes. From where we stood, we couldn’t see.
They stayed like that a long while.
“Tell me the words again,” Catrin said at last. “I misremember them.”
“May he live for ever.”
“May he…?”
“Live. For ever.”
“That’s it, of course. May he live for ever then, to be sure.”
“Thank you.” The Half-Ax general lowered her hands, and that hurtful light died out of the bracelets. “Now say your piece. But say it in few words, and be careful what words they are.”
“There’s no need for threats,” Rampart Fire said. “We’re treating in good faith, aren’t we? And it’s as easy for my people up there on the gate to kill you as it is for you to kill me. But we aren’t either of us going to do it because we’re people, not animals. We don’t bite or claw when we’re angry, like a dog would do. We may fight when we’re brought to it, but that’s a choice we make. And it’s not the first choice. Not if we got any sense. The first choice is to talk.”
The other woman made no answer to this. She held the same position for a time that seemed terrible long. “Talk then,” she said.
Catrin give a nod. She lifted up her hand slowly, with all the fingers spread as if she was signing to us up on the gate to stand down from some sally we had been about to make. There hadn’t been any such sally. She had told us to stay where we were and do nothing, no matter what fell. But that didn’t take away any of the power from that slow wave of her hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m Catrin Vennastin, like I said. Rampart Fire I’m sometimes called, which comes from my name-tech and what it does. I’m speaking to you now with the authority of Mythen Rood’s Count and Seal. I got their let and leave to treat with you, and they’ll abide any promises I make.”
“I’ve spoken my name already,” Berrobis said. “And my authority is in my name. Go on.”
Catrin still had that one hand raised, though not as high as before. She turned it in a circle to point to the village at her back and to include herself inside it. “This is us,” she said. “This little space here. We’re of Calder, and Calder’s all we want. We don’t mean to trouble the Peacemaker, or any wight else. If you leave us here and come back ten years from now, or twenty, or a hundred, here is where you’ll find us.
“So there’s nothing to be gained by fighting us. You’re not taking away a danger. If you win, you don’t win anything that’s worth having – and win or lose, you leave some of your sons and daughters on the ground.”
Berrobis did that thing of tilting her head again, looking at Catrin long and hard. “I think you mistook us,” she said, “Rampart Fire.”
“Set me right, then.”
“You say we’ve got nothing to win by beating you. Well, that’s both true and not true. We’re come to take back the tech you stole from the Peacemaker. That’s one half of it. The other half is to show the world what happens to any that lay their hands on what’s his. The same way we showed Temenstow. The same way we showed Lilbor and Wittenworth. A lesson’s got to be taught before it can be learned. My task is the teaching, and I don’t shrink from it.”
“It’s true we got some tech of yours,” Catrin said. “Two guns that we took from your fighters at Calder ford last Spring. We didn’t see that as stealing, since it was Half-Ax that picked the fight in the first place. But if that’s what carried you all this way, and if it matters so much to you, I believe we can make parley and find agreement.”
Berrobis shook her head at this, slowly and deliberately. “We didn’t come to make parley. We sent one before, an emissary, to bring you Half-Ax’s offer. You answered with despite. Now we’re come in all our might and you think you can hold us off with words. You can’t. All that happens now is fixed already.”
“I don’t believe that,” Catrin said. “It can’t be. Not when so many is like to die from it. If it will keep us from fighting, we’ll give up the two guns. We won’t put them in your hands right here and now, when you’re at our gates with such a tally as this. That would be stupid. But if you turn around and go home again, we’ll send a messenger on behind you to carry those guns back to where they hail from. And we’ll give you the two prisoners we took besides. We’ll even make apology to the Peacemaker, though we only answered you in kind when you come at us. That’s my promise to you, and if I don’t make good on it may the dead god strike me down.”
We listened, breathless. Catrin had said it so well, and so strong, I really believed for a second the Half-Ax general might say yes.
But she only smiled, somewhat sadly, and shook her head again. “You seem to think that’s a fair offer. It isn’t though. We asked, Rampart, and you answered. We didn’t come all this way, with all this muster, just to ask again. We came to deliver judgement.
“And even now, when you’re suing for parley and making promises, you lie to me. You say you’ve only got two guns of ours. All tech belongs to the Peacemaker, Rampart Fire. So anything you’re holding – including the piece you say you took your name from – you took by thieving and you keep by tricks and treachery. It’s not two guns we’ll go home with, but every last piece of tech you got in your treasury and in your armoury. And we’ll leave your village burning behind us when we go, with every Jill and Jack of you dead. That’s what my master bid me do, and Dandrake forbid I disappoint him.”
I was sick in my heart when I heard these words, and I think everyone listening must have been struck the same way. But Catrin only shrugged her shoulders. “Do you mean that though? Sometimes we’ll say a foolish thing in the hot moment and be sorry after. I’d ask you to think a while – and then a while longer maybe. Is your heart in what you said, and do you swear it for truth in front of your people and mine, that you mean to fight until there’s no one left to stand against you, or until the last of your soldiers falls in the striving?”
“I swear it for truth. In front of my people and yours. You can’t imagine, Rampart Fire, the pain and penance that’s about to be laid on you. As much as Temenstow is the tale that’s told of Half-Ax’s fury now, people will for
get Temenstow after this and talk only about Mythen Rood. You’ll die a piece at a time, until there’s nothing of you left. And then we’ll sow your ground with salt, so nobody will ever build again in this place. That’s what you got to look forward to now.”