The Legacy of Gird by Elizabeth Moon Page A

nothing, and the hours passed over him. He woke, with a countryman's instinct, at dusk, when the evening breeze brought the hayfield scent up over the wood, and tickled his nose with it. He ached in every limb; his scratches burned and itched, and his mouth tasted foul. Until he was up on his knees, he did not remember where he was, or why—but then a spasm of fear and shame doubled him up, and sourness filled his mouth. He gulped and heaved again. Meris, a boy he had known—a lad who had tagged behind him, more than once—would never walk straight again, or hold tools, and he had worn the uniform of the one who had done it.
    He could hear his mother's voice ringing in his head. This was what she'd meant, about taking service of iron, and leaving the Lady of Peace. This was what his father had feared, that he would use his strength to hurt his own people. Scalding tears ran, down his face. He had been so happy, so proud, only a few days before . . . he had been so sure that his family's fears were the silly fears of old-fashioned peasants, "mere farmers," as the sergeant so often called them.
     
    Arin came to the cleft before dawn, sliding silently between the trees. "Gird?" he called softly. "Gird!—you here?"
    Gird coiled himself into an even tighter and more miserable ball as far back as he could burrow, but Arin came all the way in, and squatted down beside him.
    "You stink," he said companionably, one brother to another. "The dogs will have no trouble."
    "Dogs?" Gird had not thought of dogs, but now remembered the long-tailed hounds that had gone out with the tracker after wolves.
    "I brought you a shirt," said Arin. "And a bit of bread. Go wash." The very matter-of-factness of Arin's voice, the big brother he had always listened to, made it possible for him to unclench himself and stagger to his feet. He took the shirt from Arin without looking at it, and moved out of the cleft before stripping off his clothes. In the clean chill of dawn, he could smell himself, the fear-sweat and vomit and blood so different from the honest sweat of toil. Arin smelled of onions and earth. He wished he could be an onion, safe underground. But the cold water, and a bunch of creekside herbs crushed to scrub with, cleansed the stench from his body. His mind was different: he could still hear Meris scream, still feel, as in his own body, the crack of breaking bones.
    "Hurry up," said Arin, behind him. "I've got to talk to you."
    Gird rinsed his mouth in the cold water, and drank a handful, then another. He pulled on the shirt Arin had brought; it was barely big enough across the shoulders, and his wrists stood out of the sleeves, but it covered him. Arin handed him the bread. Gird had not thought he was hungry, but he wolfed the bread down in three bites. He could have eaten a whole loaf.
    By this time it was light enough to see his brother's drawn face, and read his expression. Arin shook his head at him. "Girdi, you're like that bullcalf that got loose and stuck in the mire three years ago—do you remember? Thought he was grown, he was so big, but once out of his pen and in trouble, he bawled for help like any new-weaned calf," Gird said nothing; he could feel tears rising in his eyes again, and his throat closed. "Girdi, you have to go back." That opened his eyes, and his throat.
    "I can't!" he said, panting. "Arin, I can't—you didn't see—"
    "I saw." Arin's voice had hardened. "We all saw; the count made sure of it. But it's that or outlaw, Girdi, and you won't live to be an outlaw—the count will hunt you down, and the fines will fall on our family."
    It was another load of black guilt on top of the other. "So—so I must die?"
    "No." Arin had picked up a stick, and poked it into the moss-covered ground near the creek. "At least—I hope not. What your sergeant said was that if someone knew where you were, and if you'd turn yourself in, he thought he could save your life. And we'd not lose our holding. The steward . . .