The Legacy of Gird Read Online Free PDF

way."
    "But sir—"
    "You cannot be both, Gird, farmer and soldier. Not in your heart. Did your folk teach you nothing of soldiers' gods?" Gird shook his head, still shoveling, and the sergeant sighed again. "Well, 'tis time you learned. Tir will take your oath in iron, same as mine, and asks nothing but your courage in battle and your care for your comrades. The lords say he's below Esea, their god—" He peered at Gird's face, to see if he understood. Gird nodded, silently; his father had had a lot to say about Esea—a foreign god, he'd said, not like their own Lady, and not like the Windsteed. "But to us it doesn't matter," said the sergeant. "He's god enough for me, my lad, and that should be enough for you. Think about it. And no more flowers around my well, is that clear?"
    "Yes, sir." He had not thought soldiers that different. Everyone knew the capriciousness of the merin , the well-sprites . . . how the water rose and fell, regardless of local rains, how even its flavor changed. Had that well in the barracks yard gone years without proper care? He was sure the water had tasted sweeter after his offering. But he could not argue with his sergeant.
    After the roadwork, after the bridge repairs that followed the spring rains, the recruits had their first chance to mingle with the villagers. Gird spent most of that time helping his father and brothers with their work, but found an hour now and then to meet with his old friends. At first they were properly impressed with his growing strength and martial skills, but that didn't last long.
    "It's not fair," said Teris, when Gird had thrown him easily for the third time one evening. "You're using soldier's tricks against friends, and that's not fair." He turned away. So did the others.
    "But I—" Gird stared at their backs. He knew what that meant. If they shut him out, he would have no one in the village but his family. And his family, just lately, had been irritating him with complaints about his attitude. If the sergeant forbade him to remember all the Lady's rituals, his family insisted that he perform them all perfectly. He could not lose his friends: not now. "I—I will teach you," he offered. "Then it would be fair."
    "Would you, truly?" Teris turned around again.
    "Of course." Gird took a deep breath. The sergeant might think he knew nothing—or that's what he kept saying—but here he knew more than any of them. "We can say we have a guard unit—we can have a sergeant, a captain—"
    "I suppose you'll want to be captain," said Kev.
    "If he's teaching us," said Teris, shrugging, "he can be captain. For awhile."
    "We need a level field," said Gird. He would teach them marching, he thought to himself. Maybe if he taught them, he wouldn't forget the commands himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered an oath not to teach "peasants and churls" the arts of war. But marching in step wasn't an art of war. They'd all tried it when they were little boys; they just hadn't known how to do it right . And wrestling wasn't an art of war; no one fought battles by wrestling. And archery . . . all boys played with archery. Nonetheless, he took care that the level field they decided on was well out of sight of the guard stations.
    In a few weeks, Gird's troop of boys was moving around the back horse pasture with assurance. Bit by bit, as he learned from the sergeant, he transferred knowledge to the boys.
    "The little groups are called squads," he said one day. "We have enough to have three of them; it's like pretend armies. Every squad has a leader, and marches together, and you can do real things with it." They built a sod fort in the field, and practiced assaults. Teris, in particular, had a gift for it; he remembered everything Gird told him, the first time.
    Now, rehearsing his new knowledge with his friends, Gird felt that his life as a soldier was well begun. That first summer as a recruit, he spent all his free time with them; he saw no reason why their