It was left to Jon to argue why we couldn’t do it. “Even if everything fell out the way you want it to, and Koli and Berrobis tear into each other like Dandrake and Stannabanna going at it in Hell’s holt, there’ll still be a winner in that fight. And there we’ll be, caught out in the open, with the winner looking our way and finding us ready to hand. What do we do then?”
There was a moment’s silence. I was hoping someone else would say it, but in any case it had got to be said.
“We kill them,” I said. I was answering Jon’s question, but it was Jemiu I was looking at. “Whoever wins, we take our best chance, which is to throw ourselves on them while they’re weak and hurting. We kill them or else we’re killed by them. And either way, that’s an end of it.”
Jemiu shut her eyes tight and said nothing. I put my hand on her arm, but she pulled it away.
“Or Koli might forbear,” I said. “And sue for peace.” But I don’t think she believed that and certainly nobody else at the table did. We were come to hard choices and mercy was a thing forgot. It was like we had got to choose between that and hope, and we went with such hope as we had.
They all had doubts still. I had some myself, for that matter. We shared them, each with other. Jon was hard to budge at first, but he came around at last to my thinking and offered some ideas of his own – mostly about what we should do with them that couldn’t run to start with. If we started with the bare bones of a plan, there was some meat on those bones before we rose up from the table.
“It’s a big risk though,” Jon said. “We’ll only get the one chance, and if it don’t work we’ll lose everything we got.”
“If it don’t work, Jon, we won’t be there to count what we lost.”
So you see, the Count and Seal we held in dumb show on the gather-ground was not what it seemed. We had already decided before then what had got to be done. We only played out the same talk at a bigger table, and waited for everyone to decide one by one where they stood.
When it was voted, we took the count three times and got three different answers. We carried it in the end though, and we had enough volunteers to make up our muster. “Any and all of you can still change your minds,” Catrin said, and the signers picked up her words and carried them all around. “When the time comes, you’ll do what’s in you to do, whether it’s to stay or go. Nobody will say you lied or you’re forswore. Nobody will blame you.”
One of those who voted against us was Jarter Shepherd. That was a blow, for she was ever one of our best fighters and I thought she would be first to give us her voice. Instead she told me in forceful words that I was mad to take this course. “It’s like you looked at how bad everything already is and decided to make it worse,” she said. “This ain’t even a plan, Rampart. A plan’s got some chance of good success. This is throwing yourself off a rooftop in hope the ground will move out of your way.
“Nobody has to go if they want to stay, Jarter,” I said. “The danger’s great either way. You got to make up your own mind.”
She huffed out a breath that had more anger than air in it. “It’s not the danger I mind, it’s the hazarding all on one throw. If we wait these bastards out, they may tire before we do. If we show them our arses, what are they like to do but take a kick? No, I made my choice already. I’ll stay here and fight on my own ground.”
“We’ll be sorry to lose you then.”
“And I’ll be sorry to see you go. I’ll watch over your Vallen, you got my word on that. If you don’t come back, I’ll raise her with my own.”
She meant it well, but I shook my head. “That’s the one gift I won’t take from you, Jarter. Veso’s my friend, and every time I look at him I see the scars he bears because you wouldn’t see him as he was.”
Jarter looked as if I’d struck her. “That’s old history,” she said.
“You think it’s old enough that it’s forgot? You should ask Veso.”
She cut her hand across the space between us, like she was pushing something away. “This is a bad time to pick a fight with me. I said I’d stay and guard Vallen, and I mean to do it. I owe you that for bringing me alive out of Calder ford. I don’t owe you no apologies though, and I won’t offer none. If you got any other words to say to me, I guess they’ll bide our better leisure.”
“I guess they will. Dead god speed you, Jarter.”
“It’s Dandrake I pray to. And it’s his judgement I’ll answer.”
So that just left the when and the where. Catrin settled both of those without bothering to call a vote. “Tonight’s dark of the moon, so we might as well go then. Every hour we stay only makes us weaker and more afraid.
“We’ll sound the tocsin bell for the changing of the lookouts an hour before sun-up, like we always do – but this time it will be a signal to all. If you’re leaving, meet at the well. If you’re staying, go to the Hold. The door will be unlocked and Ban Fisher will show you what to do from there.
“Maybe you got goodbyes, or prayers, or other things that seem needful to be said. Best say them now, for there won’t be any time after.”
Koli
63
We went east, and we didn’t stop again. We et forest and spit out road. And the closer we got to Mythen Rood, the more Ursala’s question dragged on my heart.
I don’t think anyone knows their own selves as well as they think they do. We try hard, always, to think we’re better than we are. If we do something cruel or stupid or vengeful, we put it down to chance or give ourselves excuses for the doing of it. We never can admit to cruel or stupid or vengeful just being what we are.
I reasoned it this way and that way. To every village we passed, we brung the road, and the road was a great good. Of course I wanted Mythen Rood to have that blessing. It was impossible that I would ever think of leaving it out.
But I was bringing something else to Mythen Rood besides the road – a hard truth that might be every bit as bad as the road was good. I was like a man that puts both his hands behind his back and bids you choose. In my one hand, I had a sugar loaf, and in the other a choker seed.
What would happen if I told everyone that Vennastins was lying to keep all the village’s tech in their own hands? Was it best left hid? I was not blameless in this. I only found out what I did because I broke into the Hold and come away with the DreamSleeve. Did the Vennastins’ lies mean that my stealing could be forgot? And what about my killing Mardew?
When I had gone round the inside of my own head so many times I was too dizzy to see straight, I went at last to Monono and told it all to her. She heard me out, then just asked the one question. “What’s worrying you most, little dumpling? Going in like a bull in a china shop and wrecking the place, or just having to look everyone in the face again after the way you left?”
I thought long and hard before I answered. Both of them things was weighing on me, and I couldn’t really tell which one weighed the heaviest. But I seen how each one was rubbing against the other and making it worse. I was going to roll up to the gates of Mythen Rood with my great caravan of tech and all the people that was coming on behind us, and what was I going to say? “You sent me out faceless, but now here I am again. And I run off with your tech and I killed your Rampart but it’s not me that’s to blame, it’s everyone else. You been cheated and lied to and there isn’t nobody you can trust. Bye you now, for I got this road to build.”