Sheepfarmer's Dauther dop-1

by Elizabeth Moon

  “You’re right,” she said quickly. “But the gods have the power to give as they choose, whatever gifts we give. That’s what I meant, that we give gifts, we do not compel.” She hoped that was what she’d meant.

  He nodded. “True, no one can compel—but they are honorable, or the good ones are, and generous.” He nodded to her and went away. Paks stared after him, thoughtfully. Wizards… magical healing… somehow when she’d heard of magic potions in songs, she’d never thought of the cost in gold. Or lives.

  Chapter Eleven

  The next day Cracolnya’s cohort marched in. Pont, his junior captain, escorted the survivors back to the Company’s camp while the Duke, Cracolnya, and most of that cohort went on to Valdaire.

  “I thought the Czardians were defeated,” said Callexon. “What happened?”

  Erial, the junior sergeant in Cracolnya’s cohort, chuckled. “They were. But they’d hired a mercenary band to help them, only it was late. Then the Duke pulled us out—so when their hirelings finally arrived, they quit talking to Foss Council again and decided to fight for it.” She paused to wipe the sweat from her face. “Won’t do them any good. As long as Foss Council still has three cohorts in the field, and we have two—”

  “Who’d they hire?” Varne’s face still looked patchy and pink, but she was otherwise healthy.

  “Some southern company. We don’t have to worry; they won’t be any better than the Czardian militia.”

  “Unless they’ve got the Free Pikes,” said Vanza.

  Erial looked startled. “I never thought of that—they hardly ever hire out.”

  “Who are the Free Pikes?” asked Paks.

  “The only decent southern company,” said Erial. “They’re from the high mountains in the southwest—I think they call it Horngard.”

  “That’s right,” said Vanza. “They don’t hire out much—they fight in defense, or if their land needs money. But when they fight—!” He shook his head.

  But the Czardians did not have the Free Pikes; they had hired, Stammel explained, a renegade baron of the Sier of Westland and his so-called knights. They were best known for their woodswork—sneaking into enemy lines at night to kill sleeping men, or steal supplies, or start fires—but could put up a respectable fight on the field, as well.

  Paks had hardly realized, in the excitement of her first battle, that the Duke’s Company was not fighting alone. Now she had a look at the Foss Council militia. They wore short gray tunics over trousers of bright red (from Foss) or green (from Ifoss); they carried short straight swords and light throwing javelins. Foss Council held the right wing of their position; their camp, like the Duke’s, was in the forest. Trees ended on a gentle slope, opening on a wide expanse of grass and sedge that faced another tree-shaded ridge some distance away. To the left, the trees made an arc connecting the two ridges; to the right, the grassy meadow grew wetter, finally producing a stream that trickled away to the north.

  When the next battle came, two days later, Paks was more than ready for it. Someone had made it through the lines; Arñe was in the surgeon’s care with a knife wound, and Kir of Dorrin’s cohort was dead. Even so, her breath came short as the two lines closed. For an instant she was even more frightened than the first time—she could feel the sickening blow that had opened her leg. She thrust the thought away angrily as the remembered noise and confusion swept over her. This time she was able to keep her head, battering at the enemy stroke after stroke. She was aware of the man beside her, able to adjust her strokes to his so that they fought as a unit. It seemed to last forever: dust, noise, confusion, the rising and falling blades. Then the ground softened under her feet. She realized that they had advanced to the center of the field, where mud churned up instead of water.

  Some time after midday, both sides withdrew a space. Paks drained her water flask and wiped sweat from her face. She had come through uninjured. Her stomach growled—a long time since breakfast. They stood quiet in formation: across the way the enemy lines shifted, milling.

  “Pass your flask back,” said Donag, handing her his. “They’ll send water forward.” Soon the dripping flasks returned, and they drank. Slabs of bread came forward, then more water. Paks ate hungrily. When she looked again, the enemy seemed a little further away. She nudged Kiri beside her.

  “They’re giving back,” he said. “Don’t look at ’em, and maybe they’ll go all the way.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “Means they don’t want to fight the rest of the day. Fine with me—it’s too blazin’ hot anyway.”

  And in fact the enemy were soon back in their own camp, and to Paks’s surprise they were not sent in pursuit. In the next week, before the Duke returned, they fought several such inconclusive engagements.

  “Why don’t they want to fight and win?” she asked one night.

  “Don’t complain,” said Donag. “If they wanted to win—I suppose you mean Foss Council?—it’d be our blood on the ground, and not their militia’s. Think about it. They want to win, but what they want to win is whatever it is they’re fighting about: where a border is, or a caravan tariff, or something like that. If they can convince Czardas to yield on that, without us having to cut our way through the entire Czardian army, so much the better.”

  “But—” began Arñe, now back from the surgeons.

  “No buts,” interrupted Donag. “Tir’s guts, you idiots! You’ll get all the fighting you’ve stomach for by the time you make corporal—if you live that long. Don’t look for trouble. It’s your profession—it’ll come to you.”

  When the Duke returned, everything changed again. With Cracolnya’s archers, he decided to change ground. Under cover of darkness they slipped far to the left of their previous position. This left a gap between the Duke’s Company and Foss Council’s troops, and confused the novices almost as much as the enemy. Paks worried about the militia, and even more about what they might think.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Canna. She had seen this before. “They’re moving too. It’s a trap, if it works, and a good move even if it doesn’t.”

  They made it to the Duke’s chosen field without interference, and Stammel explained how it was better for their purposes than the other one.

  “He wants to use our archers. So far the Czardians haven’t shown us any, so we don’t have to worry. But look—the mixed cohort will be up there—” he pointed. “They can’t get to ’em on foot or horse, but they’ll be in range to feel it when Cracolnya opens up. Just watch it come.”

  As Stammel predicted, the Czardian forces gave way once the Duke’s archers opened on them. Paks, watching the enemy ranks melt away, was glad the Czardians could not counterattack in kind. The Duke ordered a pursuit, and they began several weeks of constant movement and fighting. Although they never fought the Czardians to a finish, each time they met it was on ground of the Duke’s choosing, and each time the Czardians slipped away, losing ground, back toward their city. When its walls came in sight, the Duke sent two cohorts around to the south, to stop traffic on the southern caravan route, while the other cohort and the Foss Council militia harried the Czardians. A few days after that, the campaign was over. Incoming caravans paid their tolls directly to the Foss Council commander, and he had a treaty to take back to their Table of Councilors.

  “You had a good campaign for your first one,” Stammel told the new privates in his cohort. “Some set battles—good moving engagements—enough fighting, but nothing really hard. And we’ll be doing garrison work or caravan work the rest of the season, so you’ll have a chance to learn that.”

  “What?” Arñe sounded as surprised as Paks felt.

  “Yes. Any year a campaign doesn’t last the season—which is most years—we’re hired as caravan guards or garrison troops for the rest of it. Foss Council wants us to garrison the border forts between them and Czardas, for instance—”

  “But—when do we get to go to a city—?”

  “He means, when do we get paid?” V
ik interrupted Malek.

  Stammel laughed. “Ah—thinking like real mercenaries! I expect when Foss Council pays the Duke—which shouldn’t be long—it’ll trickle down to you. And if we’re close enough to a city or town, you might have a little time to waste your pay.”

  * * *

  The Duke’s scribe sat behind a table as the captains and sergeants set out stacks of coins. The Company lined up in order of seniority, which meant that the new privates, in the back, caught only glimpses of the glinting piles before veterans blocked their view. Paks wondered if any of them had dared ask how much they would be paid. She had no idea what to expect. For that matter, she wasn’t sure how many coppers made a silver, or what a silver would buy. She had agreed, with the others, to pay into the Company’s death fund. Stammel explained that this paid for having the personal effects and any salary owed sent to the heirs of those killed. But she did not know what that would leave.

  The line snaked forward, slowly. When Paks could see the table again, the piles were much smaller. Suddenly she thought of her “expensive healing”—did that come out of her pay? The scribe called her name at last, and she stepped forward.

  “Hmm.” Captain Arcolin picked up the roll and glanced at it, then looked at Paks. “You were promoted on the first day of the campaign. You’ve got a small bonus for your actions when the sick train was attacked. Less the contribution to the fund—did Stammel explain the currency?” Paks nodded. He’d explained, but she didn’t really understand. The Guild League cities coined under their own marks at agreed weights, with the gold nata, or father, being the coin of greatest value, followed by the gold nas, or son, silver niti (mother), silver nis (daughter), and two sizes of coppers, the page and serf. “Well, then,” said Arcolin, “it will be thirty-six nitis for you.” He pushed a pile forward.

  “I’d advise you not to draw it all,” said Stammel. “As long as we’re in town, you can draw your pay once a day; you’re less likely to lose it to thieves and such.”

  Paks had never seen so much money; it was hard not to take it all. “How much, then, sir?”

  “Take ten, why don’t you? That should be enough to make you feel rich. Take two of it in mixed coppers.” Paks nodded to the scribe, and he marked the sum she drew beside her name. Stammel counted the coins into her hand. They were heavy; when she dropped them in her belt pouch, it dragged at her belt. She thought of all she could buy, and how soon she could save up the amount of her dowry to repay her father.

  “I’ve never had so much money,” said Saben, coming up beside her.

  “Nor I,” said Paks. “And to think we’ll get more next month, and the next—”

  “What are you going to buy?”

  Paks thought through her list. She didn’t know what they had, yet. “I was wondering if there was a place to buy spicebread—”

  Saben laughed. “You and I are truly countryborn. I was thinking about clotted cream—that’s what they had at fairs near home. I never had but a bit of it, and I could eat it by the bucket. And something for my sisters—ribbons, or something like that. Stammel said it could go north with the Duke’s next courier, if it was small and light.”

  Paks had not thought about presents; she felt guilty. “I’m—saving to send my dowry to my father,” she said.

  “Dowry?” Saben looked surprised. “I thought you didn’t want—”

  “To repay it,” she corrected. “He’d already given it, when I ran away.” She had never told anyone but Stammel the circumstances of her leaving home.

  “Oh. I see. But you hadn’t agreed, had you?”

  “No. I told him I wouldn’t wed Fersin, but he thought he could make me, so he gave dower.”

  “But if you didn’t agree, it’s not your fault.” Barra pushed in beside her.

  Paks wished she’d never mentioned it. “No—I suppose not. But I’d feel better if I paid it back. There’s my brothers and sisters to think of.”

  Barra snorted, and Saben asked quickly, “Do you know how much it is?”

  “Not exactly.” In fact she didn’t know anything but rumor: her oldest brother had said it was as much as Amboi dowered his eldest to the wool merchant’s son in Rocky Ford, and she thought she remembered what the baker’s wife in Three Firs had said about that. Saben looked impressed, and asked no more questions.

  When they asked Stammel for permission to leave camp and go into the city, he told them to wait. Shortly before midday, he gathered some of his novices.

  “All right,” he said. “You’ve got your pay—come along and let me show you how not to spend it.”

  Vik shook his pouch, listening to the jingle of the coins. “But, sir—I already know how not to spend it. And I have plans—”

  “Sure you do. And I can’t stop you from losing your last copper, if you’re taken that way. But I can show you the safer places to drink, and maybe keep you from being robbed and beaten in some alley.”

  “Is Foss so dangerous?” asked Saben.

  “And who’d attack us? We’re armed,” said Paks.

  “It’s exactly that attitude,” said Stammel severely, “that loses good fighters every year. With the Company, you’re good. But alone, in an alley with thieves—no. If you’re lucky you wake up in the morning with a lump on your head and no money. Unlucky, you find yourself in a slaver’s wagon with a sack over your head and a brand—or maybe just dead. You youngsters don’t know the first thing about cities—well, maybe Vik and Jorti do—and that’s why you’ll come with me this time.”

  A half hour later, Stammel led a dozen of them into the wide public room of The Dancing Cockerel. A tall, powerful-looking man in a green apron came forward to greet them.

  “Hai! Matthis, old friend—I thought we’d see you this summer. Bringing the new ones in, eh?” The man looked at them keenly. “Duke Phelan’s soldiers are welcome here—what will you have?”

  “Bring us your good ale, Bolner, and plenty of it. We’re in time for lunch, I trust.”

  “Certainly. Be seated here—unless you wish a private room?”

  Stammel laughed. “Not for lunch—are you thinking the Duke’s raised our pay?”

  “I’d trust you for it, after these years. Besides, what I heard about the Duke’s contract, you’re getting paid in gold for copper.”

  “So? You can hear anything, if you listen to all. Besides, what have contracts to do with us—poor soldiers that we are, and dying of thirst in the middle of your floor.” A roar of laughter from a table near the wall greeted this, and the tall landlord turned away. “Have a seat here,” said Stammel more quietly, and Paks and the others sat down to a long table near the center of the room.

  “How much is the ale?” asked Saben, fingering his belt pouch.

  “Last time I was here, it was three pages a mug, and a niti a jug. Local coinage. Dearer than some, cheaper than others, but Bolner doesn’t water his ale, and he won’t take a bribe to drug it, as some taverners will. This is a good tavern, as taverns go. Just remember that any landlord loves gossip, and can no more keep a secret than a pig can weave. Anyone who talks about the Company’s business will be explaining it to the captain.”

  “Hey—Sergeant Stammel!” They turned to see a fat redhead at the table by the wall. “Still taking your recruits about in leading strings?” His companions laughed again.

  Paks looked quickly at Stammel. He was smiling, but his eyes were grim. “My dear Lochlinn, if they were recruits I might, but these are all seasoned fighters—merely friends. And how is the Baroness these days?”

  The fat man jogged one of his companions with an elbow. “Seasoned? Half seasoned, I should think, close as they cling to you like chicks to a hen. Haw! They’re big enough, especially that yellow-headed wench, but—”

  Paks flushed and took a quick breath. Stammel’s hand beneath the table dug into her elbow. “Now, Lochlinn, we realize it’s been so long since you fought you can’t tell the fighters from the spectators. But come to our next, and let us show you.
And mind you keep civil—this ’wench’ as you would say—” Stammel released Paks’s elbow and thumped her shoulder lightly with his fist, “—could part you from crown to cod with one stroke. I trained her.”

  Paks gazed across the room at the fat man’s pink face, now a shade paler than it had been. He looked from Stammel to her and made a face, lifting his brows.

  “Well, pardon me for plain speaking to an old comrade.” Stammel snorted. “What a fierce look she has, too. I had no wish, wolf-maiden, to anger you and risk a blow from that strong arm your sergeant boasts of.” He rose from his table and made an elaborate bow. “There—will that content you, or must I attempt some other satisfaction?”

  Paks looked down at the table, scarred by many diners. She would gladly have leaped on the man, and killed him then and there. Saben, sitting on her other side, nudged her with his knee.

  “We would be content,” said Stammel mildly, “to take our ale in peace—and silence.”

  “You can’t order me off!” cried the fat man. Paks suddenly realized that he was both drunk and frightened. “You don’t have any right to order me around now, Sergeant—I’ve got soldiers of my own!”

  “Tsst! Lochlinn!” said one of his companions. “Let it be, man. Don’t start—”

  Paks jumped as a tall pitcher and several mugs were dumped in front of her. Two serving wenches, as well as Bolner, were at the table, distributing the ale. Stammel turned away from the fat man to grin at Bolner. “What’s the menu today, eh?”

  “The usual. Common lunch is slices off the joint, bread, redroots, cheese—we’ve the kind you like from Sterry, no extra charge to this party. Or special—roast fowl, and we’ve three in the oven. Pastries. Cella’s tarts, plum, peach, and strawberry, but not enough of the last for everyone. Fish—but I don’t recommend it; it’s river trash this time of year. Leg of mutton—it won’t be done for several hours. Soup—there’s always soup; comes with the common lunch or the special, or a mug of soup with bread is five pages.”