The Legacy of Gird Read Online Free PDF Page A

shivers down his backbone. This was really soldiering, something the village folk could watch and recognize, something to show off. If the sergeant ever let them past the gates, which he had not for tens and tens of days.
    One late winter day, shepherds came to ask the guard's help in hunting a pack of wolves. The steward agreed, and the sergeant, now mounted on a stout brown horse, led them all out into a miserably cold, bleak day with neither sun nor snow to commend it. Gird marched for the first time in uniform down the lane past his cottage, where his younger sister peeked through the leafless hedge and dared a shy wave. He could not wave back, not with the sergeant's eye on him, as it surely was, for all he rode ahead. But he knew she watched, and admired her older brother, and someday all the others would too. He could imagine himself receiving admiring glances from all the villagers, when he saved their stock from wolves or folokai, or protected them from brigands.
    Gird enjoyed the wolf hunt, though it meant that he and the other inexperienced ones spent three whole days trudging through cold damp woods and across even colder wet pastures, looking for wolf signs. It was not until much later that he realized the sergeant never expected them to find any—that's what the gnarled old tracker with his hounds was for—but it kept them out of trouble and far away from the actual hunt. They returned in the glow of a successful hunt, behind the lucky ones who had actually killed two wolves and so got to carry them through the village (Gird and the other recruits had carried them most of the way back, while the hunters themselves told and retold exactly how each spear had gone into its prey.)
    With the coming of spring, they spent more of their time outside, and more of it in things Gird recognized as soldierly. Marching drill, and long marches across the fields and pastures. Archery, not with the simple and fairly weak bows his own people used for hunting small fowl in the woods, but with the recurved bows that took all his strength to draw. They learned the use of stick and club, facing off in pairs and later with the older recruits in sections. Gird collected his fair share of bruises and scrapes without comment, and dealt as many.
    Days lengthened with the turning year. Soldiers as well as farmers had to put in their due of roadwork, and Gird's weapon on that occasion was a shovel. He hesitated before jamming it into the clogged ditch: was this like a plow? Did he need to perform the spring ritual of propitiation before putting iron in Alyanya's soil? He muttered a quick apology as he saw the sergeant glare his way. It would have to do. He meant no disrespect, and he had brought (on his own time) the sunturning flowers to the barracks well. Although the sergeant had brushed them away without comment, surely the Lady would understand.
    He might have known his mutter would not go unnoticed. Even as he tossed the second shovelful of wet clay and matted leaves to one side, the sergeant was beside him.
    "What's that you said, Gird?"
    "Just asked the Lady's peace, sir, before putting iron to 'er."
    The sergeant sighed, gustily, and looked both ways to be sure the others were hard at work before he spoke. "Gird, when you were a farmer's brat, you paid attention to the Lady, and no doubt to every well-sprite, spring spirit, and endstone watcher. I've no doubt who it was tied that bunch of weeds to the wellpost."
    Gird opened his mouth to say it wasn't weeds at all, but the proper flowers, picked fresh that morning, but thought better of it.
    "But now you're a soldier, or like to be. You need a soldier's patron now, Gird, not a farmer's harvest matron. Gods know I'm as glad of the Lady's bounty as anyone, and I grant her all praise in harvest time. It's right for farmers to follow all the rituals. But not you. Will you stop to ask the Lady's blessing every time you draw steel, in the midst of battle? You'll have a short life that