Elizabeth Moon - Surrender None

Another year went by, and another. He put on weight; his old belt gave way one day in the middle of a court session, to everyone’s delight. Someone ran to bring him a strip of blue leather; he insisted on paying for it (he was, after all, sitting as judge) and wore it thereafter. He still rode out from the city that had been Finyatha and was now Fin Panir, visiting villages and towns, following that old restlessness. He had to admit that Luap was right in one thing; it was taking much longer than he’d expected to reconcile the common folk to the continued presence of surviving magelords and their children. It would come, he was sure of it: at some point they would recognize what they lost in this continual picking at the past. Mali had told him that, all those long years ago, when he had held a grudge against Teris: all life soured if you held anger.

He was working by an open window one hot afternoon when he saw the furtive movement of those who know they’re about to do wrong. One, then another, slipped past beneath him, heading around the corner toward whatever lured them on. He was not really curious; it was too hot, and his feet hurt even in slippers. Then he heard children’s shrill voices, and someone yelled “I’ll tell Gird!” in the very tone in which one wrongdoer informs on another. Sighing, he pushed himself away from his desk, put his feet into his largest pair of boots, and was downstairs when the threatened information arrived. “Something” was going on “down the market way” that he wouldn’t like. The marshal, the barefoot child informed him “made no good of it.” Then the child was gone, with a flick of a smile that could mean anything from “I started it” to “I know you’ll fix it.” Both could be true.

He followed the furtiveness he’d observed before, and saw more hurrying backs. Odd that someone’s back could reveal intent, he thought. As much as a face, perhaps more. Then he saw a crowd, in the lower market, where the livestock pens were. At the moment, their backs had the look of guilty curiosity.

He felt the crowd’s mood shift even before the growling mutter began. Not again, he thought. Couldn’t the fools understand? Why did they start this nonsense again, now, when all was won, and only ruin could follow such anger?

Those at the back of the crowd moved instinctively away from his determined stride, even before they recognized him. Their voices followed, then raced ahead: “Gird—it’s Gird— he’s coming—” A lane opened for him, leading him toward the trouble.

There was Luap, as he had expected, and the Autumn Rose. She held the shoulders of a whip-thin, dark-haired lad whose face was a mass of bruises and scrapes, eyes barely visible in the mess. Blood dribbled from his broken nose and split lip. Gird could see the lad shaking, and no wonder. Across from them was a yeoman of the local grange, Parik, sucking raw knuckles. When he saw Gird, he glowered, no whit repentant.

Luap, uncharacteristically, said nothing. The Autumn Rose looked past Gird’s ear, an insult he would have thought but for the warning that leapt into her eyes. So. He looked back at Parik, seeing in Parik’s eyes the confidence that came from knowing he was not alone in this.

“Well?” Gird’s voice cracked, as it had been doing since Midwinter Feast and that disastrous dance in the snow. He swallowed the lump and awaited an answer.

“That’n used magicks,” said Parik, in a tone well-calculated to sting without justifying rebuke. He merely looked at the lad, and then gave a final lick to his own knuckles.

“You’re accusing him of misusing magicks?” asked Gird mildly.

“Nah—they all seen it. He’s a magelord’s brat, should never have lived this long, and needs mannering, if he’s to live any longer.” Parik made a show of patting his tunic back into place.

“And you thought it your job—?”

“He put fire on me,” said Parik, as if explaining something difficult to a dull child. “He put fire on me, so I put m’fist on him. Like you says, Gird, or used to say, simple means for simple minds.” He laughed, a little too loudly, and Gird heard nervous sniggers elsewhere.

He closed his eyes, suddenly so tired he felt he must sink to the ground. He had told them, and told them, and explained, and argued, and shouted, and broken their stubborn heads from time to time, and even, when his breath ran out, spoken softly, and here they were, just as bad as ever. Just as bad as the magelords, barring they used fists instead of magic. Gods —! he thought, then stuffed the prayer back. Ask their help and get their interference, like as not. He opened his eyes to find everyone staring at him. Give them an answer, a judgment: he had to, and he could not.

“The Marshal?” he asked. His voice was unsteady; he could see their reaction to that, like a child’s to a parent weeping.

“Don’t need no Marshal to know right from wrong,” said Parik, bolder now that Gird had not unleashed his usual bellow. “S’what you taught us, after all: don’t need no priests, no crooked judges, no lords—and ’specially no magelords—”

Gird looked at Luap: Luap white-faced, gaze honed to a steel blade that sliced into Gird’s mind. Luap, who had warned of this, whose warning he had ignored, thinking it special pleading. It was to Luap he spoke, in a conversational tone that confused the others.

“You were right, and I was wrong. Are you still of the same mind?”

Luap’s face flooded with color: surprise. “I—yes, Gird.”

“They are not all Parik.” And that was special pleading, his special pleading. Luap nodded, taking it seriously. He had not hoped for so much compassion.

“Talk to me! ” yelled Parik. Gird watched the Autumn Rose transfer her gaze to him, as deliberate as someone shifting a lance; Parik paled, but did not retreat. “Is that it, then? Are you hiding behind your pet magelords, using their power to charm us?”

“WHAT!” That time he had the old strength in it, and Parik backed up a step. Fury lifted Gird to his full height, pumped power into the fists clenched at his sides, as he stalked towards Parik, stiff-legged. “I never hide; I never did. There are no magelords, Parik, because I led you and the others to fight free of them. Mages, yes, and some mere children, like this lad here—but no magelords. No, Parik.”

Parik backed up another step, blustering. “But—but that lady there—she looked at me—”

“I’m looking at you, Parik, and seeing a bully who’d be a lord as bad as ever we fought, had he the power.”

“Me? But I just—”

“You just beat a lad half your size, for using magicks you said, but you brought no accusation to the Marshal—”

“Donag, he don’t want to be bothered with little stuff like that—”

“Then Donag must not want to be Marshal; that’s what Marshals do, is deal with ‘little stuff like that’ and keep big hulks like you from bruising their knuckles breaking lads’ faces—”

Gird heard a growl from the crowd, concentrated over there —disapproval, backing for Parik. Maybe Donag as well? Could one of his Marshals be supporting this madness?

“He used magicks! ” yelled Parik. “He put fire on me!”

“And what had you done, eh?” Gird glanced around at hostile faces, frightened faces, confused faces. “What started it all?”

“Parik’s boy complained,” said someone softly, just audible under the shifting crowd noise.

Gird swung toward that sound, and located a face that fit the voice. “Parik’s boy?” he asked.

Silence fell, in the center. Parik scowled at the young woman who edged her way to the front. Neither beautiful nor ugly; a quiet face, clear-eyed and determined. She looked straight at Gird, as if afraid to look elsewhere—certainly not at Parik.