Elizabeth Moon - Surrender None

Too many people helped with technical advice and special knowledge to mention all and leaving any of them out is unfair. But special thanks to Ellen McLean, of McLean Beef masters, whose stock has taught me more than a college class in Dairying ever did, to Joel Graves for showing me how to scythe without cutting my ankles off, and to Mark Linger for instruction and demonstration of mixed-weapon fighting possibilities. Errors are mine; they did their best to straighten me out.

“Esea’s light on him,” muttered the priest, as the midwife mouthed, “Alyanya’s sweet peace,” and laid the wet pink newborn on his mother’s belly. The priest, sent down hurriedly in the midst of dinner from the lord’s hall, dabbed his finger in the blood and touched it to a kerchief, then cut with silver scissors a lock of the newborn’s wet dark hair, which he folded in the same kerchief. With that as proof, no fond foolish peasant girl could hide the child away from his true father. The stupid slut might try that; some of them did, being so afraid of the lord’s magic, although anyone with wit enough to dip stew from a kettle ought to realize that the lords meant no harm to these outbred children. Quite the contrary. With a final sniff, the priest sketched a gesture that left a streak of light in the room long after he’d left, and departed, to report the successful birth. Not a monster, a manchild whole of limb and healthy. Perhaps this one would inherit the birthright magic . . . perhaps.

Behind, in the birthing room, the midwife glowered at the glowing patch of air, and sketched her own gesture, tossing a handful of herbs at it. It hung there still, hardly fading. The new mother grunted, and the midwife returned to her work, ignoring the light she was determined not to need. She had the healing hands, a legacy of a great-grandmother’s indiscretion in the days when such indiscretions meant a quick marriage to some handy serf. She hardly believed the change, and having a priest of Esea in the birthing room convinced her only that the high lords had no decency.

In the lord’s hall, the infant’s future was quickly determined. His mother could be his nurse, but his rearing would be that of a young lord, until his ability or lack of it appeared.

The boy showed a quick intelligence, a lively curiosity; he learned easily and could form the elegant script of Old Aare by the time he had seen six midwinter festivals. He had no peasant accent; he had no lack of manners or bodily grace. He also had no magic, and when the lord lost hope that he might show a useful trace of it, he found the boy a foster family in one of his villages, and sent him away.

It could have been worse. His lord provided: the family prospered, and the youth, as he grew to be, had no trouble finding a wife. He would inherit a farmstead, he was told, and in due time he had his own farm. With his father’s gifts, he started well above the average, and as well he had the position of a market judge in the nearest town. It was not enough to live on, but it supplemented his farm’s production. He knew he was well off, and shrugged away the hopes he’d once had of being adopted into the lord’s family. Yet he could not forget his parentage, or the promise of magic.

In the year of his birth, and far away, the boy already lived who would make his parentage worthless.

“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 bramble-berries; an armbasket for each tree in its first three years of bearing; a ruckbasket for each smallfruit tree over three years, and a back-basket 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 pick-oak 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.