by Sam Barone
15
Esk kar was up before dawn the next morning. The day’s activities started at the breakfast table with his subcommanders. Afterward he and Sisuthros spent several hours with Corio inspecting the wall.
By now both the soldiers and the laborers understood their roles, and the work proceeded steadily. Corio needed only thirty soldiers to keep everyone at their tasks.
Esk kar spent more hours inspecting the soldiers still in training. That necessitated one more retelling of the battle in the hills. He didn’t mind.
These men needed to know as much about the enemy as possible, and the more confidence they had in their leaders the better. Esk kar answered many questions regarding Alur Meriki fighting techniques.
The sun had passed its high point when Trella rejoined him, wearing a scarf to shield her head from the sun. They walked through the village, greeting the people and talking to them, reassuring the villagers by their presence. But Esk kar had to grit his teeth and force a smile to his face when they visited the temple of Ishtar and knelt in the shadows before the gloomy image of the goddess, Trella at his side.
Esk kar gave thanks in a loud voice to Ishtar for his victory, repeating the words Trella had suggested that morning. He had never been in Ishtar’s temple, or any temple in Orak for that matter. Since his family’s death, Eskkar had no use for priests and their outstretched palms. He stood there stoically, hiding his impatience, while the priest offered his interminable prayers to the deity for Esk kar’s safe return.
At last the ceremonies ended. When Esk kar returned to the sunlight he felt as if he had escaped the demon’s dark underworld. His smile returned as he took Trella’s hand, and turned toward their home.
“Master, have you forgotten our visit with Rebba this afternoon?” she asked. “We’re already late, and there may be much to see before the sun goes down.”
Esk kar’s feeling of contentment vanished. He had forgotten about the meeting with Rebba. That was natural enough, because he really didn’t want to spend three or four hours with the noble responsible for the farms surrounding Orak, listening to him explain how to grow wheat or herd goats. Esk kar thought about postponing the meeting, but he’d done that several times before he departed on his scouting mission. He knew Trella considered it important, important enough to arrange the visit as soon as possible on his return.
With no convenient excuse, he forced another smile and changed his direction. Together they walked to the river gate, then turned north, two guards accompanying them.
Once outside the village, they increased their pace, and Esk kar’s muscles soon found the walk a good challenge after the weeks of hard riding. The sun shone brightly and the air off the river smelled clean and fresh. Within Orak a background smell of people and animals living too close together permeated the air. After a few days you didn’t notice it as much, but Esk kar had been breathing fresh air for several weeks.
Finally they crossed the last of the innumerable irrigation ditches and entered the grounds of Rebba’s farm. Esk kar had never gone there before, and unlike most of the farms he’d seen, this one had nearly a dozen huts scattered about. Rebba’s dwelling didn’t look much larger than any of the others. Grain storage places, built higher than the average hut and rec-ognizable by their high entrances reached only by ladders, accounted for several of the structures.
Attached to almost every building were corrals that held goats, sheep, or cattle. Esk kar and Trella passed a few pigs that wandered by, picking at anything on the ground and fighting with dozens of chickens for anything that crawled beneath them. Close to the main house several willow trees provided shade. Esk kar noted four good — sized dogs taking their naps under the trees. Tame enough by day, at night the dogs would guard the property from petty thieves.
The smell of animals hung in the air, and Trella wrinkled her nose as they passed the corrals, though to Esk kar the odor seemed more pleasant than the village air.
Rebba greeted them at the door. At home he didn’t bother with the fine clothes he wore when business called him into Orak. Today he wore a tunic as well worn as that of any field hand. “Welcome to my home, Esk kar.”
Rebba offered his hand to Esk kar as they arrived. “A spring day like this is too pleasant to spend indoors.”
They sat on benches beneath a willow tree, at a table whose surface was gouged and pitted, no doubt from numberless days of chopping and cutting vegetables. A young girl of nine or ten seasons, one of Rebba’s grandchildren, brought cool water for them to drink.
Rebba waited until they drank before speaking. “I offer my congratulations again on your victory, Captain. Trella tells me that you wish to learn more about farming. Where would you begin?”
Esk kar knew nothing about farming and wished to know even less.
Farmers were the least important people in Orak. In fact those that actually farmed the land rarely visited the village, except for those few, mostly wives, that came each morning to sell their goods in the market, or the men who visited the smith’s to have some tool repaired. Nevertheless Trella had insisted he learn something about farming, so he put another smile on his face.
“Noble Rebba, I know little about farming. I know that farmers provide much of the food for Orak, but I grew up among the barbarians and they don’t think highly of farming.”
“They consider us dirt diggers, do they not?” Rebba answered with a laugh. “I suppose that’s true enough. But they do enough farming on their own, despite what they think of us.” He saw the look of puzzlement on Esk kar’s face. “Ah, I see that you are not aware of how important farming is even to the Alur Meriki.” He stroked his beard. “Perhaps that’s as good a place to begin as any.” He turned to Trella, sitting at Esk kar’s side. “I understand you grew up in a village to the south. Did you learn the ways of the farmers there?”
“No, Noble Rebba,” Trella answered. “I know very little about the mysteries of the farmer and the herder.”
“Then I’ll try to explain a little to you both. A farm is not only a place to grow the wheat and barley, but a place to hold herds of goats, sheep, and other food animals. The barbarians herd their own flocks, even as we do, only they take them with them as they wander.”
“But they don’t plant crops,” Esk kar countered. “They’re never in one place long enough for crops to grow.”
“Ah, but they do harvest, Esk kar. But they do it in a different way.”
Rebba smiled. “The Alur Meriki harvest crops as they travel, looking for stands of barley, emmer wheat, even peas and other vegetables. These crops they encounter along the way are as important to them as they are to us. And there are many wild crops throughout the land, such as wheat, beans, and flax. They gather those as well.”
Esk kar accepted the correction. “Well, yes, I know the women gather anything they find on the march.”
“Exactly. Even warriors cannot live on meat alone. They need milk and cheese from the goats and cows, wool from the sheep, as well as vegetables and fruits from the lands they pass through. And of course, they seize much grain and other crops from the farmers of the lands they occupy. I’m sure you know a horse grows stronger and more powerful if fed a mixture of grains besides what it gathers grazing. So farming is as important to them as it is to us.”
“Yes, horses need grain,” Esk kar replied. “Whenever possible horses are fed a mixture of grains before being ridden hard.” He began to think along the lines Rebba had suggested. “And extra grain is carried to feed the horses when they raid, while the women bake bread for the warriors to carry with them.”
Bread was light enough to carry on horseback as well as nourishing, and would last longer without spoiling than meat. Esk kar’s men had done exactly the same when they rode out on their own scouting party. He’d forgotten these little details of steppes life, and now he realized they might be more important than he’d thought.
“Yes, bread is very important to us all,” Rebba agreed. “It is bread th
at feeds your soldiers. More than that, bread pays the wages of your soldiers.
Without bread, there would be no builders, smiths, taverns, or weavers.
Bread makes possible the trade on the river that brings you the lumber and ores from the north for your wall. Without bread, there would be no gold, no silver, no horses, no weapons. Without the farmer, there would be no great village of Orak.”
Despite himself, Esk kar had become interested. “I’m ashamed to admit I do not understand these things, Rebba. But I’m willing to learn.”
“You learn very quickly, Esk kar, as all of us have noticed.” Rebba smiled at that, and his eyes took in Trella as well. “But that’s all to the good. If you’re to defend the village, you should understand these things.
And don’t be embarrassed by your lack of knowledge; few even in Orak understand these things. It’s like the mystery of counting. That is a mystery I see you understand.”
Esk kar had never considered counting to be mysterious. Difficult, to be sure, and many men never grasped anything beyond the basic concept of ten fingers. But as a soldier, Esk kar had been forced to learn to count many things.
Like everyone he started with his fingers and some pebbles. You used your fingers to count to ten, then you moved a pebble from one hand to the other, and started over again. When you were finished, you counted your pebbles, knowing that each represented ten of whatever it was you were counting. In this way you counted how many men you had, exactly as you counted how many were with your adversary. You counted your arrows, your horses, your weapons, and even how many handfuls of grain you could feed to your horse.
“I didn’t know counting was a mystery, Rebba,” he said, “though I admit that I have difficulty when the sum is much over a hundred.”
“It is a very great mystery, and one I believe was discovered as men learned to farm. We learned to store grain in bushels, baskets, and sacks, and then count the sacks for storage or trade. Farmers had to learn how to divide grain among themselves, and they had to learn how many loaves of bread come from each bushel. A special part of that counting was learning how to divide up the land, so that each farmer could have the same amount of earth to sow. Now farmers know how to count into the thousands, and we’ve learned to mark these numbers in clay as a permanent record.”
Rebba sipped from his cup before he went on. “Did you know, it was something you said months ago that made me support you and your plan to fight off the barbarians? It was when you said that the barbarians would be back in another five or ten years. You’re right about their migrations.
It’s that cycle of migration we must break, and that’s why I decided to stay and resist. We may fail, but it must be tried. We can no longer rebuild everything we create every ten years at the whim of every passing band of marauders. The crops are too precious to lose, even for a single growing season.”
“What’s so valuable about the crops?” Esk kar asked, his curiosity aroused. “Crops have been burned many times in the past. They can always be replanted.”
“Ah, now we’re back to the mysteries!” Rebba answered, smiling again.
He stood up. “Come. Let’s take a walk down to the fields.”
They walked to the rear of the house, then went down a narrow dirt track that curved between the canals. Here rough planks that could be easily moved bridged the water channels, each barely wide enough to get a small cart across. In moments they were surrounded by crops-large fields of waist — high wheat and barley, smaller fields containing peas, len-tils, beets, and even some melons. Another field grew flax, which even Eskkar knew was grown not for food but for its stem fibers that could be spun into linen. There were other plants that Esk kar didn’t recognize.
The smell of animals had vanished and now the air held strangely pleasant odors given off by the growing plants, all of them at various stages of growth. The occasional fruit tree and jasmine added their scents to the air, and the mix of all these growing things combined to create a kind of perfume, hard to describe but somehow satisfying.
Rebba led them down a narrow path and soon they were surrounded by wheat, most of it still growing, but already above the farmer’s knees.
“This is emmer wheat,” he said, indicating the field on his left. “And this is einkorn wheat. These two are the most important crops on this farm. From them we harvest the seeds that we grind into flour to make bread. It’s the wheat that gives us the most food for each hectare.”
Rebba moved in among the growing plants, looking closely at some, glancing quickly at others. Finally he selected a handful of wheat from one plant, then a few moments later, another handful from a different plant. Then he rejoined his two students.
“Here, Esk kar, look at these clusters of wheat.” Rebba held one in each hand, extending them to Esk kar. “Now, tell me which of these you would plant next year, and which you would make into flour.”
Esk kar stared down at the clusters, looking from one to the other. “I see no difference between them, Rebba,” he answered. “They look the same.”
Rebba offered his hands to Trella. “And you. Which would you choose?”
Trella examined them more closely than Esk kar. She took first one, than the other, into her own hands, and brought them within inches of her eyes, looking at them from all sides. “They seem the same to me also, Noble Rebba. Though, perhaps, the grains in one are slightly larger than the other.”
“You have good eyes, Mistress Trella,” Rebba said. “Yes, this plant is producing slightly larger seeds than the other.” He let the smaller cluster drop to the ground and held up the other. “This plant, and others like it, will be used as seed for the next crop. When we are ready to harvest the field, my farmers will look at every plant, selecting first those that produce the largest clusters and the biggest seeds, until they’ve gathered enough for the next year’s planting.”
Rebba lifted the cluster up to his nose, then took one of the seeds into his mouth for a moment. “Of course, we must taste each one, to make sure the flour we grind is not too harsh or bitter. It wouldn’t do to harvest a crop next season that made poor or bitter bread. If we did, no one would eat it, and we’d get less for what we sell on the river.”
Esk kar shook his head. The seeds had seemed the same size to him.
“So, the largest seeds will go back into the earth, to start the next crop?
Why does that matter?”
“Do you know how much wheat a hectare of land produces, Esk kar?”
Esk kar shook his head. “I am not even sure what a hectare is.”
“Ah, I’ve rushed ahead,” Rebba apologized. “A hectare is a square plot of earth exactly one hundred long paces on each side.” He waited until Esk kar nodded in understanding. “Each hectare of wheat yields about thirty — three bushels of seeds. Each bushel, after it is ground into flour, will make over seventy loaves of bread. On this farm, there are thirty hectares planted with wheat, so we will harvest almost a thousand bushels. Some will be saved for the next planting, a few go to feed the farmers and their families, and some are lost to rodents or rot during storage or transport.
Say, three hundred bushels in all. The remaining seven hundred bushels are available to be stored or sold. With what we sell, we can pay the smiths for our tools, the carpenters for our plows, the builders for our houses, and the traders for what few luxuries we need. And do not forget the herders-whose animals we use or sell for their meat.”
Rebba smiled at Esk kar. “With all the excess food produced on this farm, and others like it, those of us who own the land around Orak can even afford the most expensive luxury of all-supporting soldiers and their insatiable demands for weapons and horses.”
A thousand bushels of wheat! Esk kar was astonished. And that was just from this farm. There were dozens of farms around Orak, though not many larger than Rebba’s. “I didn’t know so much could be harvested, Rebba.”
“Orak is very fortunate in that the soil is very rich and water plent
iful. A few miles away from the river, the farms produce much less. The farther you go from the Tigris, the smaller the harvest; eventually a farm will produce only enough to feed those who labor on it. Go beyond that and the lands are too dry to support even the poorest and most desperate farmer. That is why we choose to risk our lives staying here and fighting the barbarians.”
Rebba shook his head at the follies of men before continuing. “So you see, each cycle of growth and harvest is important, and that’s the answer to your question, Esk kar. The largest seeds go into the earth, and from the next harvest we will select once again the largest seeds. In this manner, over tens of years, we increase slightly the amount of wheat grown from each hectare. So each season there is a tiny bit more food produced, because we select and plant with care.” He turned back to Trella. “That is the mystery. The cycle goes on each season-sow, grow, harvest, select, and sow. And with each cycle we can feed more people.
Or buy more weapons.
“And that’s why, Esk kar,” Rebba continued, “we don’t want to lose even a single crop to the barbarians. Once the crops are destroyed or the land damaged, the work of ten or twenty years is undone, and the next harvest will yield less food. Instead of a rich harvest, we may not have enough to feed our own people. We’ve planted early this season, because of the news of the barbarians. We will harvest earlier, so this season’s crop will already be smaller. And this season’s seed crop will be stored in Orak, hidden in underground chambers so that even if the village falls, our families across the river may yet find them for the next planting.”
“Esk kar will not let the village fall, Noble Rebba,” Trella said.
Rebba looked from one to the other. “When Nicar declared his intent to stay and fight, I had grave doubts about our chances. Nevertheless, I remained here, even though I know my fields will be burned or flooded.”
He shook his head sadly at the thought. “Let’s return to the house. There’s still much to show you.” Rebba looked up at the sun and saw that nearly an hour had passed. “You will never be a farmer, Esk kar, but by sundown, you will at least know the value of a farm.”