Read on below for an extract from Elizabeth Moon’s Legacy of Honour.

1

‘You’re big enough now,’ said the boy’s mother. ‘You don’t need to be hanging on my skirts any more. You’re bold enough when it’s something you want to do.’ As she spoke, she raked at the boy’s thick unruly hair with her fingers, and wiped a smudge of soot from his cheek. ‘You take that basket to the lord’s steward, now, and be quick about it. Are you a big boy, or only a baby, then?’

‘I’m big,’ he said, frowning. ‘I’m not scared.’ His mother flicked her apron over his shirt again, and landed a hand on his backside.

‘Then get on with you. You’re to be home right away, Gird, mind that. No playing about with the other lads and lasses. There’s work to be done, boy.’

‘I know.’ With a grunt, he lifted the basket, almost hip-high, and leaned sideways to balance the weight; it was piled high with plums, the best from their tree. He could almost taste one, the sweet juice running down his throat . . .

‘And don’t you be eating any of those, Gird. Not even one. Your Da would skin you for it.’

‘I won’t.’ He started up the lane, walking cantways from the weight, but determined not to put the basket down for a rest until he was out of sight of the house. He wanted to go alone. He’d begged for the chance, last year, when he was clearly too small. And this year, when she’d first told him, he’d – he frowned harder, until he could feel the knot of his brows. He’d been afraid, after all. ‘I’m not afraid,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I’m not. I’m big, bigger than the others.’

All along the lanes he saw others walking, carrying baskets slung over an arm or on a back. A handbasket for each square of brambleberries; an armbasket for each tree in its first three years of bearing; a ruckbasket for each smallfruit tree over three years, and a backbasket for apples in prime. Last year he’d carried a handbasket in each hand: two handbaskets make an armbasket, last year’s fee. This year was the plum’s fourth bearing year, and now they owed the lord a ruckbasket.

And that leaves us, he thought bitterly, with only an armbasket for ourselves. It had been a dry year; most of the fruit fell before it ripened. He had heard his parents discussing it. They could have asked the lord’s steward to change their fee, but that might bring other trouble.

‘It’s not the name I want, a man who argues every measure of his fee,’ said his father, leaning heavily on the table. ‘No. It’s better to pay high one year, and have the lord’s opinion. ’Tis not as if we were hungry.’

Gird had listened silently. They had been hungry, two years before; he still remembered the pain in his belly, and his brother’s gifts of food. Anything was better than that. Now, as he walked the lane, his belly grumbled; the smell of the plums seemed to go straight from his nose to his gut. He squinted against the bright light, trying not to think of it. Underfoot the dust was hot on the surface, but his feet sank into a coolness – was it damp? Why did wet and cold feel the same? He saw a puddle left from the rain a week ago, and headed for it before remembering his mother’s detailed warnings. No puddles, she’d said; you don’t come into the lord’s court with dirty feet.

The lane past his father’s house curved around a clump of pickoak and into the village proper. Gird shifted his basket to the other side, and stumped on. Up ahead, just beyond the great stone barn where the whole village stored hay and grain was the corner of the lord’s wall. The lane was choked with people waiting to go in the gate, children younger than Gird with handbaskets, those his own age with armbaskets, older ones with ruckbaskets like his. He joined the line, edging forward as those who had paid their fee came out and left room within.

Once inside the gate, he could just see over taller heads one corner of the awning over the steward’s table. As he tried to peek between those ahead of him, and see more, someone tapped his head with a hard knuckle. He looked around.

‘Good-looking plums,’ said Rauf, Oreg the pigherd’s son. ‘Better than ours.’ Rauf was a hand taller than Gird, and mean besides. Gird nodded, but said nothing. That was safer with Rauf. ‘They’d look better in my basket, I think. Eh, Sig?’ Rauf nudged his friend Sikan in the ribs, and they both grinned at Gird. ‘You’ve more than you need, little boy; that basket’s too heavy anyway.’ Rauf took a handful of plums off the top of the basket, and Sikan did the same.

‘You stop!’ Gird forgot that loud voices were not allowed in the lord’s court. ‘Those are my plums!’

‘They may have been once, but I found them.’ Rauf shoved Gird hard; he stumbled, and more plums rolled out of the basket. ‘Found them all over the ground, I did; what’s down is anyone’s, right?’

Gird tried to snatch for the rolling plums. Sikan kicked him lightly in the arm, while Rauf tipped his basket all the way over. Gird heard some of the other boys laughing, a woman nearby crying shame to them all. The back of his neck felt hot, and he heard a wind in his ears. Before he thought, he grabbed the basket and slammed it into Rauf’s face. Sikan jumped at him; Gird rolled away, kicking wildly. In moments that corner of the courtyard was a wild tangle of fighting boys and squashed fruit. The steward bellowed, the lord’s guards waded into the fight, using their hands, their short staves, the flats of their swords. And Gird found himself held immobile by two guards, with Rauf lying limp on the stones, and the other boys huddled in a frightened mass behind a line of armed men.

‘Disgraceful,’ said someone over his head. Gird looked up. The lord’s steward, narrow-faced, blue-eyed. ‘Who started it?’

No one answered. Gird felt the hands tighten on his arms, and give a shake. ‘Boy,’ said a deeper voice, one of the men holding him. ‘What do you know about this? Who started it?’

‘He stole my plums.’ Before he spoke, he didn’t realize he was going to. In the heavy silence, with Rauf lying still before him, and the courtyard a mess of trampled fruit, his voice sounded thin. The steward looked at him, met his eyes.

‘Your name, boy? Your father?’

‘Gird, sir. Dorthan’s son.’

‘Dorthan, eh? Your father’s not a brawling man; I’d have thought better of his sons.’

‘Sir, he stole my plums!’

‘Your tribute . . . yes. What was it, this year?’

‘A ruckbasket, sir. And they were fine plums, big dark ones, and he—’

‘Who?’

Gird nodded at Rauf. ‘Rauf, sir. Him and Sikan, his friend.’

‘Anyone else see that?’ The steward’s gaze drifted over the crowd of boys. Most stared at their feet, but Teris, a year older than Gird and
son of his nearest neighbor, nodded.

‘If you please, sir, it was Rauf started it. He said they were good plums, and would look better in his basket. Then he took some, and Gird said no, and he knocked Gird aside—’

‘Rauf struck the fi rst blow?’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Anyone else?’ Reluctant nods followed this. Gird saw a space open around Sikan, who had edged to the rear of the group. Sikan flushed and moved forward when the steward stared hard at him.

‘It wasn’t so bad, sir,’ he said, trying to smile around a bruised lip. ‘We was just teasing the lad, like, that was all.’

‘Teasing, in your lord’s court?’

‘Well—’

‘And did you hit this boy?’ The steward pointed at Gird.

‘Well, sir, I may have – sort of – sort of pushed at him, like, but nothing hard, not to say brawling. But he’s one of them, you know, likes to make quarrels—’

The steward frowned. ‘It’s not the first time, Sikan, that you and Rauf have been found in bad order.’ He nodded at the men behind Gird, and they released his arms. Gird rubbed his left elbow. ‘As for you, Gird son of Dorthan, brawling in the lord’s court is always wrong – always. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir.’ There was nothing else to say.

‘And you’re at fault in saying that your plums were stolen. They were your lord’s plums, owed to him. If Rauf had given them in, the lord would still have them. Instead—’ The steward waved his hand at the mess. Very few whole fruit had survived the brawl. ‘But your family has a good name, young Gird, and I think you did not mean to cause trouble. So there will be no fine in fruit for your family . . . only you, along with these others, will stay and clean the court until those stones are clean enough to satisfy Sergeant Mager here.’

‘Yes, sir.’ And he would be late home, and get another whipping from his father.

‘Now as for you, Sikan, and Rauf—’ For Rauf had begun to move about, and his eyes opened, though aimlessly as yet. ‘Since you started this trouble, and moreover chose a smaller boy to bully, you’ll spend a night in the stocks, when this work is done.’ And the steward turned away, back to his canopy over the account table where the scribes made marks on long rolls of parchment.

Gird found the rest of that day instructive. He had scrubbed their stone floor often enough at home, and scraped dung from the cowshed. But his mother was no more particular about the bowls they ate from than Sergeant Mager about the courtyard stones. He and the other boys picked up pieces of the squashed fruit and put them in baskets – without getting even a taste of it. Then they carried buckets of water – buckets so large that Gird couldn’t carry one by himself – and brushed the stones with water and longhandled brushes. Then they rinsed, and then they scrubbed again. Just when Gird was sure that the stones could be no cleaner had they just been quarried, the sergeant would find a scrap of fruit rind, and they had it all to do over again. But he did his best, working as hard as he could. By the time the sergeant let them go, it was well past midday, and Gird’s fingers were raw with scrubbing. He called Gird back from the gate for an extra word.

‘Your dad’s got a good name,’ he said, laying a heavy hand on Gird’s shoulder. ‘And you’re a good lad, if quick-tempered. You’ve
got courage, too – you were willing to take on those bigger lads. Ever think of being a soldier?’

Gird felt his heart leap. ‘You mean . . . like you?’

The sergeant laughed. ‘Not at first, of course. You’d start like the others, as a recruit. But you’re big for your age, and strong. You work hard. Think of it . . . a sword, a spear maybe . . . you could make sergeant someday.’

‘Do you ever get to ride a horse?’ That was his dream, to ride a fast horse as the lords did, running before the wind.

‘Sometimes.’ The sergeant smiled. ‘The steward might recommend you for training. A lad like you needs the discipline, needs a place to work off his extra energy. Besides, it’s a mouth less to feed at home.’ He gave Gird’s shoulder a final shake, and pushed him out the gate. ‘We’ll have a word with your dad, this next day or so. Don’t start trouble again, eh?’

* * *
‘Holy Lady of Flowers!’ His mother had been halfway down the lane; she must have been watching from the house. ‘Gird, what did you mean—’

‘I’m sorry.’ He stared at the dust between his toes, aware of every rip in his clothes. They had been his best, the shirt actually new, and now they looked like his ragged old ones. ‘I didn’t start it, Mother, truly I didn’t. Rauf stole some plums, and I thought we might have a fine—’

‘Effa says Rauf hit you first.’

‘Yes’m.’ He heard her sigh, and looked up. ‘I really didn’t—’

‘Gird—’ She put a hand on his head. ‘At least you’re back, and no fine. Effa says the steward didn’t seem angry, not like she thought he would be.’

‘I don’t think he is.’ Suddenly his news burst out of him. ‘Guess what the sergeant said – maybe I can train to be a soldier! I could have a sword—’ Excited as he was, he didn’t notice her withdrawal, the shock on her face. ‘Sometimes they even ride horses, he said. He said I was big enough, and strong, and—’ Her stiff silence held him at last; he stared at her. ‘Mother?’

‘No!’ She caught his arm, and half-dragged him down the lane to the house.

The argument went on all evening. His father’s first reaction to the story of the plums was to reach for his belt. ‘I don’t brawl,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t raise my sons to be brawlers.’

Arin, as usual, stood up for him. ‘Da, that Rauf’s a bad lot, you know that. So’s the steward: they’ve got him in stocks this night, and Sikan too.’

‘And I’ll have their fathers down on me, did you think of that? Oreg’s no man to blame his own son, even if Rauf tells the tale aright. If Gird hadn’t fought back, Oreg would’ve known he owed me sommat, a bit of bacon even. And Sikan’s father – I want no quarrel with him; his wife has the only parrion for dyecraft in this village. As for this way – it’s no good. We can’t be fighting each other; the world’s hard enough without that. They’ll have to know I punished Gird, and I’ll have to go to them and apologize.’

So it was a whipping on top of his bruises, and no supper as well as no lunch. Gird had expected as much; he saw from Arin’s wink that he would have a scrap to eat later, whatever Arin could sneak to him without being caught. But his father was as unhappy as his mother to hear of the sergeant’s offer of training.

‘It’s never good to come into notice like that. Besides, we follow the Lady: would you take sword against your own folk, Gird? Break the village peace in blood and iron?’ But before he could decide whether it was safe to answer – the answer he’d thought of, while waiting for his father to come from the fields – his father shrugged. ‘But if the steward comes, what can I say? They have the right to take you, no matter what I think about it. The best I can hope for is that the steward forgets it.’

The steward did not forget. Gird spent the next day wrestling with the family’s smallest scythe – still too long for him – mowing his father’s section of the meadow. He knew he’d been sent there to get him out of sight, away from the other village boys. He knew his mother had baked two sweet cakes for Rauf’s family and Sikan’s, and his father had taken them over in the early morning. It was hot, the steamy heat of full summer, and the cold porridge of his breakfast had not filled the hollows from yesterday’s fast. But above him, in the great field, his father was working, able to see if he shirked.

He kept at it doggedly, hacking uneven chunks where his brother could lay a clean swathe. There had to be a way. He paused to rub the great curved blade with the bit of stone his father had given him, and listened to the change in sound it made on different parts of the blade. When he looked sideways up the slope to the arable, he saw his father talking to another of the village men. Gird leaned on the scythe handle, the blade angled high above him, and picked a bur from between his toes.

When he looked again, his father had started back up the arable. Gird dared not move out of the sun to rest, but he tipped his head back to get the breeze. Something rustled in the tall grass ahead of him. Rat? Bird? He scratched the back of one leg with the other foot, glanced upslope again, and sighed. Someday he would be a man, and if he wasn’t soldier, he’d be a farmer, and able to swing a bigger scythe than this one. Like his father, whose sweeping strokes led the reapers each year. Like his brother Arin, who had just grown out of this scythe. He grunted at himself, and let the long blade down. Surely he could find a way to make this work better.

By nightfall, with all his blisters, he had begun to mow a level swathe. He’d changed the handles slightly, learned to get his hip into the swing, learned to take steps just the right length to compensate for the blade’s arc. The next day, he spent on the same patch of meadow. Now that he had the knack of it, he was half-hoping the steward would not come. He would grow up a farmer like his father, leading the reapers in the field, guiding his own oxen, growing even better fruit . . .

It was the next day that the steward came at dusk, when his father had come in from the fields, and Gird had begun to feel himself out of disgrace as far as the family went. The children were sent to the barton out back, while the steward talked, and his father (he was sure) listened. He wanted to creep into the cowbyre and hear for himself, but Arin barred the way. He had to wait until his father called him in.

There in the candlelight, his father’s face looked older, tireder. His mother sat stiffly, lips pressed together, behind her loom. The steward smiled at him. ‘Gird, the sergeant suggested that you were a likely lad to train for soldier: strong and brave, and in need of discipline. Your father will let you choose for yourself. If you agree, you will spend one day of ten with the soldiers this year, and from Midwinter to Midwinter next, two days of ten. It’s not soldiering at first, I’ll be honest with you: you’ll work in the barracks just as you’d work here. But your father’d be paid the worth of your work, a copper crab more than for fieldwork. And the following year, you’d be a recruit, learning warcraft, and your father will get both coppers and a dole off his fee. ’Twould help your family, in hard times, but your father says you must do as you wish.’

It was frightening to see his parents so still, so clearly frightened themselves. He had never really understood them before, he felt. Behind him, in the doorway, Arin and the others crowded; he could hear their noisy breathing. Could soldiering be so bad as they thought? All his life he’d seen the guardsmen strolling the village lane, admired the glitter of their buckles, the jingle of their harness. He’d been too young to fear the ordersticks, the clubs . . . he’d had strong hands rumpling his hair, when he crowded near with the other boys, he’d had a smile from the sergeant himself. And the soldiers fought off brigands, and hunted wolves and folokai; he remembered only last winter, cheering in the snow with the others as they carried back the dead folokai tied to poles. One of them had been hurt, his blood staining the orange tunic he wore, but the world was hard, and there were many ways to be hurt.

He wanted to stand on one leg and think about it, but there stood the steward, peering at him in the dimness with eyes that seemed to see clear into his heart. He’d never spoken to a lord before, exactly. Was the steward a lord? Close enough.

‘It would not be a binding oath,’ the steward said, a little impatiently. Gird knew that tone; his father had it when he asked who had left the barton wicket open. It meant a quick answer, or trouble. ‘If you did not like it, you could quit before you started the real training . . .’

Gird ducked his head, and then looked up at the steward. From one corner of his vision he could see his father’s rigid face, but he ignored it.

‘Sir . . . steward . . . I would be glad to. If my father allows.’

‘He has said it.’ The steward smiled, then. ‘Dorthan, your son Gird is accepted into service of the Count Kelaive, and here is the pirik—’ The bargain-sum, Gird remembered: not a price paid, as if he were a sheep, but a sum to mark the conclusion of any bargain. The price was somewhat else.

The very next morning, Gird left at dawn to walk through the village to the count’s guards’ barracks. None of his friends were out to watch him, but he knew they would be impressed. The guard at the gate admitted him, sent him straight across the forecourt to the barracks. The guards were just getting up, and the sergeant was crosser than Gird remembered.

‘Get in the kitchen fi rst, and serve the food; then you can clean for the cooks until after morning drill. I’ll see you then. Hop, now.’

The porridge was much like their own, if cooked in larger pots and served in bigger bowls. Gird carried the dirty bowls back, and scrubbed them, under the cook’s critical eye, then scrubbed the big cookpots. Then it was chop the onions, while his eyes burned and watered, and chop the redroots until his hands were cramped, and then fetch buckets of clean water. All the while the cook scolded, worse than his oldest sister, while mixing and kneading the dough that would be dumplings in the midday stew. The sergeant came in while Gird was still washing down the long tables.

‘Right, lad. Now let’s see what we’ve got, here. Come along.’ He led Gird out the side door of the kitchen, into a back court, a little walled enclosure like a barton with no byres. In one corner was the kitchen well, with the row of buckets Gird had scrubbed neatly ranged along the wall.

The sergeant was just as impressive as ever, to Gird’s eye: taller and broader than his own father, hard-muscled, with a brisk authority that expected absolute obedience. Gird looked at him, imagining himself grown into that size and strength, wearing those clean, whole, unmended clothes, having a place in the village and in his lord’s service more secure than any farmer.

‘You’re a hard worker, and strong,’ the sergeant began, ‘but you’ll have to be stronger yet, and you’ll have to learn discipline. Begin with this: you don’t talk unless you’re told to, and you answer with “sir” any time I speak to you. Clear?’

Gird nodded. ‘Yes . . . sir?’

‘Right. You’re here to learn, not to chatter. Dawn to dusk, one dayof ten . . . can you count?’

‘Not really, sir.’

‘Not really is no. Can’t count sheep, or cows?’

Gird frowned. ‘If they’re there . . . but not days, sir, they don’t stay in front of me.’

‘You’ll learn. Now, Gird: when you come here, you must be clean and ready to work. If you can’t wash at home, come early and wash here. I’ll have no ragtags in my barracks. Is that your only shirt?’

‘No, sir, but th’other’s worse.’

‘Then you’ll get one, but only for this work. Do you have shoes? Boots?’

Gird shook his head, then remembered to say ‘No, sir.’ Shoes? For a mere lad? He had never had shoes, and wouldn’t until he wed, unless his father had a string of good years.

‘You’ll need them later; you can wear them here, but not at home. Did you have breakfast at home this morning?’ Of course he had not, beyond a bit of crust; the porridge had just gone on when he walked up to the barracks. The sergeant hmmphed at that. ‘Can’t grow soldiers on thin rations. I’ll tell the cook, and you’ll eat here all day on your workdays. Now – about the other boys. I want no brawling, young Gird, none at all. If they tease you about going for soldier, you learn to let it pass. No threats from you, no catcalling at Rauf or Satik or whatever his name was. You’ll be where they can’t bother you, if you keep your nose clean. Hothead soldiers cause more trouble than they’re worth; you have your chance, for you and your family: earn it.’

An answer seemed required; Gird said ‘Yes, sir.’

The rest of that day was more chores and little that Gird could see as soldiering, although he did see the inside of the barracks, with the lines of wooden bunks and thin straw mattresses, the weapons hung neatly on the walls, the jacks (inside! He wondered, but did not ask, how they were cleaned. Surely they were cleaned; they smelled less than his own family’s pit.). He swept a floor that seemed clean enough already, carried more buckets of water to the cook, ate a bowl of stew larger than his father ever saw for his lunch, washed dishes until his hands wrinkled afterwards, fetched yet more water (he felt his feet had worn a groove from the well to the kitchen door) and sliced yet more redroots, had a huge slab of bread and a piece of meat for supper, and was allowed to stand silent in a corner and watch the ordered marching that preceded the changing of watch before dusk.

He ran home along the dark lane his bare feet knew so well, bursting with excitement. Meat! He didn’t know if he would tell them, because they would see no meat until harvest . . . but it had tasted so good, and the stew and bread had filled all the hollows in his belly. He burped, tasting meat on his breath, and laughed.

They were waiting, and had saved a bowl of gruel and hunk of bread for him; he felt both shamed and proud when he could give it to the others.

‘So – they’ll feed you well?’ His mother wasn’t quite looking at him, spooning his share carefully into other bowls.

‘Yes. Breakfast too, but I must get there early.’

‘And do you like soldiering?’ she asked, a sharpness in her voice.

‘It’s not soldiering yet,’ he said, watching the others eat. ‘I helped the cook today, chopping onions and carrying water . . . I carried enough water for two days.’

‘You can carry my water tomorrow,’ his mother said. His father had yet said nothing, watching Gird across the firelight as he ate.

The time from summer to Midwinter passed quickly. One day in ten he rose before dawn, at first cockcrow, and ran up the lane to the gate where the guards now knew him by name and greeted him. Into that steamy kitchen, larger than his own cottage, where the cook – never so difficult as that first day – gave him a great bowl of porridge before he served the others. As the days drew in with autumn, that kitchen became a haven, rich with the smells of baking bread and roasting meat, savory stews, fruit pies. It was a feastday, however plain the soldiers found the food (and he was amazed to hear them grumble); he had his belly full from daylight to dark. With a full belly, the work went easily. Hauling water, sweeping, washing, chopping vegetables, chopping wood for the great hearths. He learned the names of all the guards, and knew where everything was kept. Two of them were recruits, one from his village and one from over the fields sunrising, tall boys he would have thought men if he hadn’t seen them next to the soldiers. He began to learn the drill commands as he watched.

The other nine days passed as his days always had, in work with his family. He was growing into the scythe, or managing it better, and he was allowed in the big field for the fi rst time. Arin took him up to the high end of the wood, where the village pigs spent the summer rooting and wallowing, to help gather them into the lower pens. They ate their meager lunch in a rocky cleft up higher than others ever came, a place Arin had shown him the first year he went to help gather pigs. He spent a few days nutting in the woods, with his friends, laughing and playing tricks like the others. They all wanted to know what he was learning. When he explained that so far it was just work, like any work, they wondered why he agreed.

‘It will be soldiering,’ Gird said, leaning back against a bank and squinting up at one of their favorite nut trees. ‘And in the meantime, it’s food and coppers for my family – what better?’

‘Good food?’ asked Amis. He was lean and ribby, as they all were that year. Gird nodded. ‘Lots of it, too. And that leaves more—’

‘Can you take any home?’

‘No.’ That had been a disappointment, and his first disgrace. Sharing food was part of his life: everyone shared, fast or feast. But when he tried to take home a half-loaf being tossed out anyway, it had brought swift punishment. ‘The sergeant says that’s stealing. They’re getting enough for me, he says, more than I’m worth. That may be so, though I try. But not one crust will they let me take out, or a single dried plum.’ The stripes had not hurt as much as knowing he could not share; he had not told his father why he’d been punished.

Terris made the closed-fist gesture against evil. ‘Gripe-hearts, is what they are. You watch, Gird, they’ll turn you against us.’

‘Never.’ Gird said it loudly, though he could already sense a rift between him and his friends. ‘I can share from my own, when I earn my own: then you’ll see. Open heart, open hands: the Lady’s blessing.’

‘Lady’s blessing,’ they all said. Gird made sure to put a handful more than his share into the common sack that would go up to the count’s steward as their fee for nutting in those woods.

At Midwinter Feast, he stood once more before the steward, this time in the Hall, and agreed to his next year’s service. His father had stayed home, shrugging away Gird’s concern for his cough. Two days in ten, he thought, they will not have to feed me, and there’s the coppers besides. He was proud of the thought that his pay might help with the fieldfee.

Two days in ten made one in five. In the short days of winter, the sergeant set him to learning counting and letters. Gird hated it. Sitting with cold feet and numbed hands over a board scrawled with mysterious shapes was far harder than fetching water from the well, even when that meant breaking the ice on it first. At home he could read tallies well enough, the notched sticks all the farmers used to keep count of stock and coin. But here were no helpful hints . . . you could not tell, from the words, who wrote them. Without the clue that this tally was Oder’s . . . when everyone knew that Oder had only a double-hand of sheep . . . you had to know all the words and numbers to find out what it said.

Some of the men laughed unkindly at his struggles. ‘Thickhead,’ said one, a balding redhead whom Gird had rather liked before. ‘Perhaps the knowledge could get in if we cracked it open for you?’

‘More like his little wit would fall out,’ said another. ‘He thinks with his hands and feet, that one, like most peasants.’

Gird tried to concentrate on markings that seemed to jump and jiggle about in the fl ickering candlelight. Was the sign for three supposed to stick out this way, or that? He wiggled his fingers, trying to remember. The sergeant’s sword was on the same side as that hand… he shook his head, confused once more.

‘Here,’ said the redhead, handing him two pebbles. ‘Put this in your hand – no, that hand – and hold it there. Now call that your left hand, eh? Stonehand. Some signs are stonehand, some are empty hand – you can remember that much, can’t you?’

He might have, but he was angry. He clenched his teeth against the temptation. The sergeant intervened. ‘Let him alone, Slagin. The stone’s a good idea, but leave the rest of it. Some boys take longer, that’s all. All right, Gird, the cook needs more water.’

By spring, the two days in ten of plentiful food had begun to show. He had always been heavier built than most of his sibs. ‘More like my brother,’ his father had said, of an uncle dead before he was born. Now his broader frame began to carry thicker muscle. He had grown another two fingers up, and was straining the seams of his shirt. And that summer he carried a ruckbasket of plums without difficulty.

All that year, Gird worked his two days in ten, and his family settled into the knowledge that he would almost certainly become a soldier. His father continued to teach him the crafts and skills of farming, but with less urgency. His mother let out his old shirt, and made a new one, without pleading with him to stay home. His brothers admitted, privately, that life was a bit easier when he got part of his food elsewhere, and the coppers came in on quarterdays. Rauf tried once to tease him into a fight, calling him coward when he backed off; a few months later he noticed that Rauf crossed the lane to avoid him.  And his friends seemed glad to see him, when any of them had time off for foolery, which wasn’t often.

So at Midwinter, he gave his oath to the steward, and entered training as a recruit, to sleep in the barracks with the others and learn the arts of war.