“Okay then,” Catrin said. “I guess you did mean it.”
“Oh yes.”
“I’d like to swear to something too though, since swearing’s what we’re about. I swear, Berrobis Someone’s Cousin, that I’ll do whatever’s needful to be done to keep my people safe from this rat-nest rabble you brought here. And when the time comes, you’ll find Half-Ax is a long way to limp back home to. I mean your soldiers will find that out. You your own self, you won’t be going home. Because I’ll hunt you out when mine meet yours, and I’ll not leave you hale nor whole. You’ll be chewed, and being too bitter to swallow you’ll be spit out again. Orts and fragments you’ll be, on this ground, and I’ll leave you to lie until the needles eat the meat of you and the sun bleaches your bones.”
She said all this in a calm and level voice, like she was talking about how the potatoes in first field were showing this week. She took a deep, slow breath and let it out again. Berrobis stared at her in solemn puzzlement, as if she was looking at a dog that had learned how to dance.
“That offer I spoke of,” Catrin said, “it’s still there if you want it. Peace is there if you want it. I don’t ever say, as you said, that the future’s set. You just got to decide what future you want and who gets to be there when it comes. For all our sakes, you better see some sense and choose right. Otherwise there’s none under Heaven can save you.”
There was wonder on every face I could see. The Half-Ax soldiers, that had stood there until then looking straight out in front of them like they were carved out of wood, were now staring open-mouthed at Catrin. Even Berrobis couldn’t keep her surprise from showing. I saw her struggle with it, and then with the anger that came after it. No doubt the soldiers saw it too, and no doubt they were wondering what storm would follow. But that was the cleverness of it. Berrobis couldn’t show that anger without being lessened by it, for it would mean this woman she had been talking to like a mother to a child had scratched her under her skin.
She took her time with what she did next. She undid the buckle of her sword’s sheath and slid it down from off her back. Holding it in her two hands, she offered it to Catrin to take. I hadn’t seen until then what a beautiful thing the sheath was. It was embroidery work, mostly gold but with all the other colours you could think of threaded through it in curving lines that went over and through each other like ripples on water. “This is the best steel ever beat out on a forge,” Berrobis said, “whether in Half-Ax or anywhere else. Take it.”
Catrin’s hands stayed at her sides. “Tell me what it means first.”
“It’s a challenge. I give you this, and you give me what’s on you that’s best and richest. We’ll meet in this fight, late or soon, and one of us will take back what they gave from the other’s bled-out body. Until that’s done, the fight’s not over.”
Even then, Catrin didn’t take the sword. Not straightway. “When we of Mythen Rood offer challenge,” she said, “we offer blood. Show me an inch of that steel, unless you’re shy of it.”
The general drew the sword a little way, keeping one hand on the hilt and the other on the steel guard at the open end of the sheath. Catrin put her own hand into that narrow gap and ran her thumb down the bare edge of the blade.
“Now you.”
Berrobis touched the same place, that was wet now with Catrin’s blood, and broke her own skin there. She let go of the blade and it sank back into the sheath of its own weight.
Catrin took the sword. Over her head, over all our heads, a quick flight of yellowhats went by, turning rings around each other until they went in among the nearer trees and were lost to sight.
Catrin turned the sword so the hilt was facing the general. “I didn’t bring anything out here with me except the clothes I’m standing in,” she said. “You take the sword and I’ll take the furnishings. When we meet, the two can come together again. How would that be?”
“I accept it,” Berrobis said. She put her hand on the hilt and drew the sword out. “Until then.”
“Until then.” Catrin buckled the empty sheath onto her belt. She took her time doing it. Then the two women bowed their heads, each to other, and went their ways. The gates opened and took Catrin in as Berrobis and her honour guard crossed the half-outside and disappeared back into the trees.
As soon as the gates closed again, Catrin unbuckled the sheath and let it fall to the ground.
“What was that?” Fer shouted down. “It wasn’t what we agreed. It was like you was only trying to put her in a worse rage than ever.”
“Let her rage,” Catrin said. She kicked the sheath away from her as if it was something hateful and she couldn’t abide the look of it. “I’d rather have her hot than cold, as far as that goes. And I said what came into my head. I seen what she was, the kind that thinks a fair word covers a foul deed, and wraps herself in her own honour like a fucking cloak. The only thing that mattered was to keep her talking there until I seen them birds go by.”
59
The birds were the signal we’d agreed on.
While Catrin and Berrobis swapped all those insults, threats and challenges, the Half-Ax column stayed where it was and waited on orders. The gap between the two ends of it, the one coming round from the north and the other from the south, was about four hundred strides or so. And four hundred strides was wide enough.
Jon had drawn near the fence, and seen the enemy coming around it on both hands. Then he saw them stop, wonder of wonders, just before they barred his way for good and all. One by one, he sent his people running out of the woods across the bare, narrow strip of the half-outside. One by one, they clambered up the grass-grail and over the fence to safety. The sky stayed grey and the light was poor. Nobody saw them go.
Jon came last of all and dropped down inside the fence to be clasped and held by the other six. Torri Hammer, who had been standing on the coping of the well, waved a bright red scarf to pass the word along to Lune Cooper at the corner of the Span, who waved to Cal Paint on the gather-ground.
And Mull Woodsmith, standing up on the roof of Rampart Hold, slipped the catch on one of her bird boxes, shooing the yellowhats out with clicks of her tongue and flutterings of her fingers so they winged their way over Catrin’s head and told her it was done.
If Mythen Rood was turned into a sheep pen, then all the flock was safely home.
60
With the Half-Ax circle now closed, we waited to be attacked. Berrobis Bradeshin’s anger made it seem impossible that she would delay in giving the order. But hours went by and no attack came.
We had done the best we could to make ourselves ready. There were guards on every part of the fence, and a reserve force on the gather-ground that could be sent inside of a minute to any place where Half-Ax made a sally. The guards and the reserves between them made up almost half the village, and it took twenty more besides to keep them fed and watered and send runners between them to make sure all was well.
So the news about what Rampart Knife had found came out in inches and ounces. Jon should have said it to all at once in the Count and Seal, but there was no Count and Seal. We gathered all we could in the big round chamber anyway. This was a thing that needed to be told betimes. And when the tale was done, them that were there went their separate ways and told it to them they met. So it spread piecemeal through the village until the word was on every tongue and the thought in every mind.