The Legacy of Gird (21 page)

This would never do. Gird strode back into the center of the clearing as if the sun were shining and he knew exactly what to do. The men looked up at him, sour-faced.

"Triga, what did you find yesterday?" Triga, interrupted in mid-complaint, looked almost comical. Then he stood up.

"I found that swamp I told you about—" Someone groaned, and Triga whipped around to glare in that direction.

"Never mind," said Gird. "Go on—and you others listen."

"I walked all around it—that's why I came back so late. There's three little creeks goes into it, and two comes out. I don't know what the middle's like yet—there wasn't time—"

"Good. That's where we'll go today."

"All of us?" Herf asked. "It's raining."

"It's raining here, too," Gird pointed out. "You'll get just as wet sitting here complaining about the rain, as walking along learning something useful. Maybe we'll find a cave, and can sleep dry."

They didn't look as if they believed him, but one by one his fledgling army stood up. He grinned at them.

"But first," he said. "We're going to do something about
that
." And he pointed toward the jacks. "It stinks enough to let anyone know a lot of men have been here, and it's making us sick as well."

"We don't have no tools," someone said. Kef, that was the name. Gird grinned again.

"I brought a shovel, remember? I'll start the digging, but we'll all be doing some—because there's more to it than just shoveling."

He had spotted a better site the day before. Now he took his shovel and tried it. Here a long-gone flood had spread across the clearing below the waterfall, and left a drift of lighter soil, almost sand. He started the trench he wanted, and gave the shovel to Kef. "That deep, and straight along there," he said. They really needed a bucket, too, but they didn't have one. He'd have to use the wooden bowls for the ashes. The men watched as he scooped ashes and bits of charred wood from the side of the firepit into one of their bowls. "You, too," Gird said, pointing at the other bowls. "We're going to need a lot of ashes."

"But I though ashes only worked in a pit," said Ivis.

"Best in a pit. But a trench is like a little pit. Ashes on top, then dirt, after you use it."

"Every time?"

"Every time—or it won't work. The guards kept a pot of ashes in the jacks; I started doing that at our cottage later, and ours smelled less than most." He looked at them, noticing the squeamish faces. "The worst part," he said carefully, "is going to be burying what's already there." He was pleased to note that no one asked if they had to.

It took longer than he'd hoped, with only the one shovel and small bowls to carry ashes, but at last they had the worst of the noisome mess buried, strewn with ashes, and a new bit of clean trench for that morning's use. Gird covered it up himself when they were all done, and marked the end with a roughly cut stake poked in the ground.

"Now we clean up," Gird said, "and then we go look for Triga's swamp. He's right—if we can find a safe way into it, that the foresters and guards don't know, it could be a very handy place."

Triga led the way, with Gird behind him, and then the others. Gird had asked Ivis to be the rear guard, staying just in sight of the others. Within the first half-league, he was wondering how this group had survived undetected so long. They talked freely, tapped their sticks against trees and rocks as they passed, made no effort to walk quietly. Finally Gird halted them.

"We're making more noise than a tavern full of drunks. If there's a forester in the wood anywhere, he's bound to hear us."

Ivis turned a dull red. "Well—Gird—we don't like to come on 'em in surprise, like—"

"The foresters? You mean they know—"

"It's sort of—well—they'd have to know, wouldn't they? Being as they have to know the whole wood. But what they don't actually
see
they don't have to take notice of. My brother's one of them, you see, and—"

"And on the strength of one brother, you trust them all? What about the guard?"

"Oh, the duke's guard is a very different matter—very different indeed. But they don't venture into the wood except when the duke's hunting. And then they're guarding him, not poking about on their own."

"And—duke? Your lord isn't Kelaive?"

"Gods, no! I've heard about him, even before you came. Our duke's Kelaive's overlord, just as the king is his."

"So the foresters of this wood know that a band of outlaws lives here, and expects you to make enough noise coming so they can avoid you. What if they change their minds? Surely your duke's offered a reward"

"My brother wouldn't take a reward for me," Ivis said earnestly. "And if he captures the others, there I'd be, right in the middle."

"What if he's transferred, or killed, or one of the other foresters gets greedy?" Ivis said nothing in answer; from his expression, he had thought of this before and tried to forget it. Gird looked at all the others. "Listen to me: an army does not go about expecting its enemies to get out of the way. We can't fight like that. Cannot. Perhaps Ivis's brother has enough influence on the foresters of this wood, but we will not always be in this wood. We have to leave it someday, and you must know how to move
quietly
. And we must be alert—we must find the foresters before they find us, and never let them know we were near. Understand?" Heads nodded, some slowly. "Now—the first thing—no talking while we march. No banging on stones or tree limbs. Walk one behind the other, far enough that if one man stumbles, the others don't fall too. Triga, you should be far enough ahead that I can just see, and you shouldn't be able to hear us—you listen for anyone
else
. If you go too fast, I'll click pebbles twice; if I click three times, stop. You give two double clicks if you hear foresters. Ivis, if you hear anything behind us, give two double clicks. The rest of you—if you hear two double clicks, stop where you are and do not make a noise. Clear?"

Again, heads nodded. Gird hoped that there were no foresters out that day, so they could get in at least one practice before it was needed. He waved Triga ahead, waited until he was almost out of sight on the narrow trail, and started off himself. Behind him, the noise of the others was much less, although he could hear an occasional footfall. Triga led them fairly quickly, and Gird had a time keeping him in sight and avoiding obvious noisemakers. But his followers grew even quieter, as if they were listening for themselves, and learning from their own noise how to lessen it.

The double-click he had been half-waiting for startled him when it came. The others had frozen in place; Gird took a final step and a stick broke under his foot. He grimaced, and looked back along the line. Cob, behind him, grinned, wagged his head, and made the shame sign with his fingers. Gird shrugged and spread his hands. When he looked ahead, Triga had stopped just in sight. Gird could hear nothing now but the blood rushing in his own ears, and the faint trickle of water somewhere nearby.

The click had come from behind him, and now he saw a stirring in the line, silent movement as one man leaned to another and mouthed something. Gingerly, Gird took a step back toward Cob, placing his feet carefully on soggy leaves and moss. Cob leaned back to get the message, then forward to Gird.

"Ivis. Said we were a lot quieter, but should practice stopping. He may do it again."

Gird wished he'd thought of suggesting it, but at the same time wanted to clobber Ivis. His heart was still racing at the thought of being caught by foresters. He nodded, instead, and murmured "Tell him not too many—we have a long way to go." Cob nodded, and passed the message back. Gird waited what he thought was long enough for it to reach Ivis, then waved Triga on, and started again himself. He almost trod on the same stick, but managed to stretch his stride and avoid it.

Triga's swamp, when they came to it, appeared first as softer mud in the trail, and then a skim of sib-colored water gleaming between the leaves of some low-growing plant with tiny pink flowers. Ahead was an opening in the forest, with tussocks of grass growing out of the water.

"We have to turn here, if we're going around it," said Triga softly to Gird. The others had come up, but were squatting silently in the dripping undergrowth on the dryest patches they could find.

"Have you ever been out in it?"

"When I was a lad, once. There's someplace out there with plum trees; I could smell the flowers."

Gird sniffed. It was just past blooming time for the plums in his village, but wild plums came both earlier and later. He didn't smell any.

"Did you find the trees?"

"Finally—after I got wet to the thighs, and then when I got home my da beat me proper for running off from the goats—but there's a dry hummock somewhere, with plums."

"Right out in the middle, I'll bet," said Cob. "O' course, we're already wet."

"There used to be a path partway in," said Triga. "Follow me and step just where I do." And with that he was off again. The others fell into line.

Triga's way led alongside the bog, and finally came close enough so that Gird could see how big it was. Despite the drizzle and fog, he could just make out the forest on the other side, a dark massive shadow. In the bog itself were islands crowned with low trees tangled into thick mats. After a short time, Triga came out from under the trees, and stepped onto one of the tussocks. It trembled, but held him up as he took two steps and hopped to another. Gird looked at it distrustfully. How deep
was
that dark water? And what was under it?

"One at a time," he said, and reached a leg across to the black footprint Triga had left. He didn't like the way his foot sank in, and stepped quickly to the gap between tussocks. The mud sucked at his feet, and let go with a little plop. Across the gap, and onto another tussock. Now he was out in the open, where anyone could see him—anyone sitting snug under the forest edge, for instance. His neck prickled. One of Triga's footprints had a finger of murky water in it; when Gird stepped there, his foot sank to the ankle.

"I don't like this," said someone behind him, and someone else said "Shhh!" Their feet squelched on the wet ground, and Gird cursed silently as icy water oozed through his boot.

Only six of them had started into the bog, when the first foothold gave way and Herf found himself hip deep in cold, gluey muck. He yelped; three gray birds Gird had not noticed fled into the air with noisy flapping wings and wild screeches. Triga stopped and looked back, grinning. Gird said "Wait!" as softly as he thought Triga would hear.

They could not explain what happened without talking; Gird sweated, but endured the noise as best he could, while they established that yes, Herf had stepped carefully in the now-sinking footprint, and yes, all the footprints had been getting wetter, and no, it was clear that nobody else could make it. Herf, sprawled across the tussock with one leg stuck in the mud, was grimly silent.

"All right," Gird said finally. "First we get Herf out, and back on solid ground. Then all of you in the forest start circling the bog, and looking for other ways in. Don't get stuck."

"Don't walk on moss," Triga added. "It looks solid, but it won't hold you up."

"We can't come back the way we came in," Gird went on. "So Triga will have to find us a way across. And now we know that a group trying to follow us would bog down—"

"Although the tracks are easy to see," said Cob.

"Right. If we use this, we need a way in that we can all take, and that they can't see."

Getting Herf loose was no easy matter, and involved five men getting themselves wetter and muckier than they had intended. Two more got stuck, although not as badly.

In the meantime, Gird and the others perched on tussocks noticed that water was creeping up around their feet. "We have to keep moving," Triga said, unnecessarily, and went on, aiming for one of the brush-covered islands. By the time all of them had made it there, to crouch under the thick tangle of limbs and new leaves, they were mud to the knees and breathless.

"I didn't know it would be worse with more than one," said Triga. Gird accepted that as an apology, and nodded. At least some of the little trees were plums, tiny fruits just swelling on the ends of their stems. Water dripped on him, sending an icy trickle down the back of his neck and along his spine. He hoped his raincape was keeping the grain and beans dry. If he had to be wet and cold, it should be for a good purpose.

"We'd better go on," he said. "And if there's a way for each of us to pick his way safely—that might be better than stepping in your tracks."

"It's that kind of grass." Triga showed them again. "Not that other, with the thinner blades; it grows on half-sunk moss, and you can go right through. This stuff is usually half-solid, but you have to keep moving. Try to pick your way several tussocks ahead, so you don't have to stop except at places where trees grow. All those are safe. I think."

"Look at this," Cob said. He pointed to a delicate purple flower on a thin stalk. "I never saw anything like that."

"They grow in bogs," Triga said. "A little later, the whole bog will be pink with a different flower—the same kind, but larger. The purple ones grow only on the islands."

Gird looked at him. This sounded less and less like the knowledge gained on one clandestine visit as a child. Triga reddened.

"No one could find me here," he said. "I used to come here a lot, before I left home."

"And not after?"

"The others didn't want to see a swamp, they said."

"Well, we're seeing it now. What else do you know about it?"

Triga began to lead them across the little island to the bog on the far side. "There aren't many fish, for all this water. Lots of frogs, though, and little slick things like lizards, but wet. Birds—different kinds you don't see anywhere else. Some of them swim in the bits of open water, and dive. Most of them wade, and eat frogs and flies. Flowers. One island has a wild apple grove, and one has the best brambleberries I've ever eaten. Wild animals: something like a levet that swims, long and sleek, and levets, of course. Rabbits sometimes—I've surprised them grazing the grass on the islands. Deer come to the edge to drink and once I saw one where the apples grow. They jump very fast and carefully."