Davi awoke. Clement persuaded her to eat some of the sweet cake they were feeding all the convalescent children. She put her head onto Davi’s chest and listened to her breathe. The rattling sound had not returned, though Davi continued pale and weak. How soon, Clement wondered, did she dare take this hollow-eyed child out into the wind?
“Do you want more cake?”
Davi solemnly shook her head.
“I need to go hunt for something in the stable. Do you want to come along?”
Davi’s nod was no surprise. The child had gotten to the point that she could tolerate being out of physical contact with Clement, but if Clement went out of her sight she became hysterical. Clement was getting used to carrying Davi everywhere with her, balanced on her hip, and the soldiers had gotten used to seeing her, and didn’t stare any more. Clement could swear the child was getting heavier, but at least she was no longer completely passive, and did some of the work of holding on, and could even use a chamberpot on her own.
“You’ve turned me into a beast of burden,” Clement complained as she carried the bundled child to the stable.
Davi looked at her blankly. Her eyes reminded Clement of some soldiers—casualties, sometimes without a visible wound. But Davi was slowly improving, and lately had even said some words, and had been coaxed to smile. In the stable, several older children, crowded into a big stall with a demonstration horse, were being instructed in hoof care. The horses were exceptionally popular; there had been interventions to keep them from being over-fed by the doting children. Clement set Davi in a pile of clean straw. “I’ll be over there. Just call me if you want me.”
Davi huddled passively in the straw. Clement felt that stark gaze on her back as she began her hunt through the junk that filled what had once been the tack room. She kept in Davi’s sight, as if she were a helpful target and Davi the archer.
This odd, round building had once been a kind of school for Paladins, when Paladins were known as deadly philosophers, rather than as farmers who took up weapons in place of hoes. A sturdy building, with fireplaces and small windows, it was intended for year-round occupation. Surely it had once contained the kind of equipment Clement hoped to find, particularly since the Paladins had abandoned their domiciles in haste to attack the Sainnites after the Fall, leaving much behind.
Clement heaved aside a tangle of oddments and broken objects that should have been thrown out. Rats fled, squeaking outraged protests. She choked in dust and wished for a lantern. A generation’s worth of dirt and debris lay moldering here, and much of it had settled on her by the time she discovered the treasure trove: A rack of skis, their bindings rotted away. Snowshoes, their webbings gone but the frames still intact. And a sledge. She could not restrain a whoop of triumph. A sledge!
She dragged it out. Davi crawled out of her nest to inspect it, and some of the other children abandoned their lesson to take a look. They soon lost interest; but Davi solemnly mounted the contraption, and sat down. She pointed at the rotted remains of the harness. “How will you pull it, Clemmie?”
“I saw some old horse harness in there.” Clement went back to the junk and extricated some stiff leather, the buckles rusted, but nothing that some sand and grease could not fix.
“It’s too big,” Davi objected.
“Well, I am a soldier, which means I can make anything out of anything. Soldiers die if they can’t adapt, you know.”
Davi nodded somberly.
“You can help me clean the sledge. It’ll be a cold trip, but you’ll have blankets.”
“Will we stay in people’s houses?” Davi apparently had some experience with this kind of travel already, perhaps from seeing visitors at her family’s farmstead.
“Yes. You mustn’t tell anyone I’m a soldier, though. It’s a secret.”
Davi shook her head vigorously.
“If you eat more, and rest, in a few days we’ll leave. I’ll take you home.”
“Home?” She looked confused.
“I’ll take you home because you’re a weight in the scale. Because your father is willing to be hated and persecuted just to have you back again. Why, I don’t know.”
“Mmm.” Davi gave a tentative, confused smile.
“Are you getting cold? I can take this harness to my room and start working on it. I want you to eat more cake to make you strong.”
Davi held up her arms for Clement to pick her up.
Another five days had passed before Clement took Davi and the loaded sledge out the gate. The runners had been sanded and sharpened, the snowshoes re-webbed, the harness adapted, and Davi had a straw-stuffed mattress to sleep on, and an oilcloth cover to keep out the snow. Both of them wore the heaviest, warmest clothing that could be found, non-issue right down to the skin. Uneasy though she felt without weapons, Clement had left even them behind.
Her soldiers stood speechless; even Purnal seemed amazed. But the children, who knew an adventure when they saw one, cheered the travelers out the gate.
Clement had never worn snowshoes before, but managed to avoid tripping over her own feet until the watchers could no longer see her. That first day, she fell down regularly. That first night, she lay with Davi on the sledge, sleeping in short bits until, awakened by cold, she got up to put more wood on the fire and to turn her drying clothing. The child slept undisturbed in a solid, wool-clad lump, with a wool cap tied under her chin. When the snow began to glow faintly, reflecting a distant dawn, and the stars that populated the frozen sky began to wink out, Clement dressed in clothing that was almost dry and halfway warm, loaded up the sledge, strapped herself in the harness, and set forth once again.
That day, she finally mastered the snow-shoer’s leg-swinging waddle. The sledge seemed almost weightless as she guided it down the hillside, and even when they reached the flat, she was amazed at her own speed. Davi rode behind her, complaining once of thirst, but subsiding when Clement explained that the water had frozen solid in its jug. But Clement became aware of her own thirst now. Dry-mouthed, she could not swallow the sweetened oatcakes in her pockets. Snow-blind, she could not see the passing countryside. A tugging at the harness brought her out of her daze.
Davi pointed, it seemed, into the sky, which was, Clement noted giddily, a gorgeous color: winter twilight. Across it lay the faintest smear of smoke.
“Ah!” Clement turned them down the hillside, where she could not see a wagon track, and in a last burst of blind energy got them practically to the farmhouse door before she fell for the first time that day, and was too tired to get up.
“Haven’t got your snow legs yet?” A farmer in woolen clothing redolent, though not unpleasantly, with cow manure, hauled her to her feet and undid the harness buckles. “I saw you coming,” she added. “So we’ve put the kettle on. Snow took you by surprise?”
“Not really,” Clement gasped. “I planned to travel home before autumn mud. But the child took sick.”
“Bad luck.” An angular woman Clement’s age or older, she made light work of lifting the sledge to the shelter of the porch, while Clement stood in dumb tiredness with Davi in her arms. She had concocted a much more elaborate explanatory tale for herself, but the farmer didn’t ask for it. The farmer said, “We’ve got an empty bed. Two of the children married out this year. Twins. Went to the same household so they could still be in the same family. Come in, come in.
In the kitchen, a half dozen people looked up from chopping vegetables to chorus a distracted welcome. The angular farmer collected a tea tray and led the way to an equally crowded parlor. Clement sank into an empty chair and was plied with hot tea and generously buttered bread, as Davi drank a mug of hot milk, sitting in her lap. The angular farmer waved away Clement’s thanks, saying obliquely, “It’s been a good year. Good milk, healthy calves.”
And if it hadn’t been a good year, Clement wondered vaguely, what would the farmer say instead? That there was always enough to go around, or that what is given comes back eventually? Davi got down from her lap
and joined some other children on the floor, who moved over to let her watch their game. The angular farmer, Mariseth, Seth to her friends, refilled Clement’s teacup, cut her some cheese, and sat knee-to-knee with her. Clement recognized the cheese, which was even better here, where it had been made. The fear in her slowly came undone, like an old, stiff knot. Seth’s knee was warmer than the heat from the fire, as she recounted bits and pieces of information that might interest a traveler, and Clement asked questions, expressed surprise, uttered an occasional, cautious comment. There was not much she needed to do; the farmer’s incurious friendliness was like a path she needed only follow.
During the raucous supper, some twenty-two people ate willy-nilly, sitting or standing wherever there was space, all talking at once about cows and cheese and distant news from far-off places. Seth had status here, Clement noted, a lieutenant in her way, risen to that unacknowledged position over many years. Davi circled back to Clement’s lap again, and ate obediently from her spoon. “I didn’t tell!” she whispered.
“Good girl.” Clement fed her some cheese, but Davi didn’t like it, and the farmer offered a bowl of curds instead, which Davi emptied happily. Then the child fell asleep, and Seth, who had not been out of conversation distance all evening, commented, “A smart girl you’ve got there. But serious for her age. What is she, three?”
Clement nodded vaguely. “I wonder if I should have given her longer to recover from her illness. But I needed to go home.”
“She’s a bit too pale and quiet. But maybe she’s a quiet kid? Those thinkers often are, like you.”
“Me?” Clement gave a laugh.
“Thinking hurts, doesn’t it? Too much, maybe. I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”
In a bare cubby of a room, heated by a stove tiny as a kettle, someone had brought the contents of the sledge, and hung everything that was damp to dry. With the farmer there, Clement had cause to be grateful for her recent sick nursing, for she undressed Davi and put her to bed without any obvious display of inexperience. Seth lit a little lamp that she put on a high shelf, out of child’s reach. She set out a chamber pot, and folded Davi’s clothes. Clement felt a rising warmth, as though that muscular leg still pressed hers.
Seth said, “You’re not so tired as you looked when you first arrived.”
“It was food and drink I needed. Tomorrow, I’ll have Davi hug the water jug to keep it from freezing.”
“Oh, we’ll send you on your way with a foot warmer full of coals. That’ll do the job, and keep your girl from getting chilled if the wind starts to blow. Some of that cheese, too, since you liked it so much. How about a nip?” she added.
Clement followed Seth down the hall to her own room, where apparently she slept in grand solitude, beneath brightly colored scrap quilts, beside a small stove that she swiftly lit and stoked, then poured Clement a little cup of brandy from a long husbanded bottle. Clement sipped very cautiously, thinking to preserve at least some of her fleeting wits. “I feel a bit like a cow you’re herding,” she said.
Seth gave a wide, startling grin. “If you were a cow, I could force you into the barn.”
“Oh, I’ll let you herd me in. But why—?”
Seth sat beside her on the settle, thigh to thigh. “You’ve seen some things worth seeing, and I like the way it’s marked you. But you don’t want me asking.”
Clement thought, this woman is too smart to be a cowherd! And she knew she ought to be afraid, or at least more cautious than she was. She said, “While you were having a good year I’ve been having an awful one. I want to forget. To pretend, maybe, that my life isn’t mine.”
The farmer said, “No questions, then. So . . .” She gestured, palm up, as though requesting the gods to fill her empty hand. “What? What do we do?”
Clement kissed her. That worked very well, so she kissed her again. After that came an extremely pleasant and quite long-lasting and stunningly satisfying confusion.
Clement dreamed a very strange dream in which she was a cowherd, but the cattle paid her no heed, and kept wandering away and getting eaten by wolves. When there were no beasts left, she stood alone in an empty field under an empty sky, with nothing to do but ponder her own incompetence. “Your girl’s calling you,” the angular farmer said blurrily. So Clement awoke from emptiness to surprise: a cozy bed, a warm shoulder against her cheek, the lingering memory of an extremely memorable night.
Davi’s voice came very faintly down the hall.
“It’s dawn,” Clement mumbled. “Well, almost dawn. I think I’ll get on my way. Long journey ahead.”
“Stay,” said the farmer quietly.
Clement swallowed surprise. “I don’t know a thing about cows.”
“Not much to know. You’ll come to hate milking and mucking as much as we do. It doesn’t take long!”
“Davi’s father—”
“I’d say he’s not much of a husband. Neglectful.”
Clement let that sink in. Had she acted neglected? She had indeed. “A good father, though,” she said.
“But what have you got to go home to? Stay the winter. Send him a letter. My family won’t mind.”
Seth’s hands were good, and for a little while Clement didn’t try to escape them. Davi subsided, back into sleep. But eventually, Clement got out from under the warm quilts, put on her clothes, and got underway. The angular farmer stood on the porch and watched her leave, but when Clement looked back, she was gone, to the cow barn, no doubt, to start the milking, or to the dairy, to check on the cheese.
These things happen, Clement told herself.
Bittersweet regret followed her all the way to Watfield. Nine days later, blistered and frost-bitten, she unwound her muffler in the middle of a blinding snowstorm, so the gate captain could recognize her face. Later still, with Davi big-eyed and frightened in her arms, she endured the wrath of Cadmar. She had been gone twice as long as she had promised, and had taken untoward risks, and had abandoned her soldiers. She admitted all that, and did not argue with his anger. Still later, with Davi asleep in Clement’s bed, she sat with Gilly while his night-time pain draught was taking hold, and told him about the blinding white days, the one bewildering storm that did its best to kill her, the nights in cold barns on straw beds with only pauper’s bread to eat, the nights of sharing hearty meals at family tables and sleeping in a bed hospitably vacated for her and Davi. And she told him about Seth.
Gilly did not laugh at her. After a long silence, he said, “If you become Shaftali—”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t be dishonest with me. If you become Shaftali, I couldn’t endure my life. And with both of us gone, Cadmar would fall like a house without a center beam, and maybe the Sainnites would fall with him.”
Clement said, after a stunned silence, “My face is known. I’m the notorious baby-thief of Watfield. I can never escape that. I never even thought to try.”
“Stop playing these dangerous games, then. Be what you are.”
The next day, Clement was back in uniform. Her hair was trimmed, her buttons polished, her feet, though they ached with frostbite, were jammed into her newly blacked boots. Davi found her attire fearsome, and cried. She refused to eat her porridge, fought the bath, huddled under the blankets in Clement’s bed, and was generally defiant and exasperating. “I want to go home!” she whined. “You promised!”
“I see you’re feeling much better. Well enough to accuse a Lieutenant-General of being a liar. You’ve got a lot of courage, little girl, but not much sense.”
Davi glared at her: sturdy, angry, not much intimidated. “You promised!”
Unable to leave Davi unattended, Clement had paper and ink delivered to her room, and she tried to work on the task Cadmar had set her, but even without the distracting child it would have been impossible. He had refused to accept the closure of any garrison and demanded alternatives. She wrote an extremely irritable list of impractical and intolerable solutions:
1. Go back to the
homeland and recruit a few thousand mercenaries to join us in exile.
2. People the garrisons with straw dummies.
3. Command each soldier to kidnap and personally raise two children, while also fulfilling all other duties.
4. Take a thousand Shaftali women prisoner, impregnate them all, and force them to raise the resulting children as Sainnites.
5. Require the female soldiers myself among them to bear and raise children. (Though I am too old, probably.)
She snorted. She didn’t have to look beyond the child glowering at her from the bed to see why her people were childless. What would she do, if Davi were hers? After a year of pregnancy and a year of nursing, two years off the battlefield, if she survived childbirth and did not suffer any of the terrible injuries birthing women were subject too, would she then carry Davi on her back into war? Or leave the child behind to be inevitably orphaned? And who would raise her then?
“Lieutenant-General?” A hesitant tap on her door. “Davi?”
Davi came out from under the covers, big-eyed. “You should have trusted me,” said Clement sourly, and went to open the door.
The steady, quiet father of this sturdy girl came in, pushed past Clement, and snatched up the child. “Oh, blessed day! Davi! You’re so thin! Oh, my sweet girl!”
Davi clung to him, and cried, and then declared that she had been very brave, though she had been in a scary place, and that Clemmie—she had forgotten that she hated her, apparently—had taken her home across the snow.
“So much adventure for such a little girl.” The man gave Clement a look and added dryly, “I thought you Sainnites were cowards about snow.”
“Your information had better be worth what I’ve been through.” Strange that it hadn’t occurred to her until now to wonder if this man were telling the truth. But the Shaftali were an honest people, a quality that was, according to Gilly, embedded in the culture by the once ubiquitous Truthkens. In most of her dealings with the Shaftali, when they agreed to speak at all, they spoke the truth.
Earth Logic Page 24