Dagulf said mournfully. “If we’d got to keep more of it, it would have.”
“The redheads--” Waddo’s head went back and forth in the automatic cautious gesture the rest of the villagers had always used to make sure he wasn’t around before they spoke some of their minds. He didn’t see anything untoward--Garivald knew because he looked around, too--but he didn’t say much, either, contenting himself with a sigh and the remark, “That can’t be helped.”
“Neither can grasshoppers,” Dagulf said. Garivald contrived to step on his foot; the other peasant wasn’t thinking enough before he spoke today.
Waddo nodded. Garivald didn’t trust him even so. The firstman might find favor with the Algarvians by betraying other villagers, too.
After as little small talk as he could get away with and still stay polite, Garivald went back to his house and told Annore, “I’m going out to the woods again. This time, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to cut some firewood for us, too, not just for the redheads.”
“That would be good,” his wife said. “If you could knock a squirrel out of a tree with a rock or club a rabbit or two, that would be even better.”
“If I’m lucky, I will,” Garivald answered. “Of course, if I were lucky, there wouldn’t be an Algarvian within a hundred miles of Zossen.”
“And isn’t that the truth?” Annore said bitterly. “Well, go on, then. Maybe some small luck will help make up for the big.”
“Here’s hoping. Hand me the whetstone, will you?” He took the hatchet off his belt and got the edge as sharp as he could. While he was working for the Algarvians, he didn’t care what state his tools were in; dull ones gave him an excuse for going slower and doing less. Working for himself, he wanted to do the job right.
He hurried out among the trees. Firewood and the chance to hunt weren’t all that drew him. There in the quiet, words shaped themselves in his head more readily than back in the village. He’d had a whole verse vanish from his mind when Syrivald asked him a question at just the wrong time.
Waddo expected a song to make winter nights pass more pleasantly. Garivald knew that was the piece he should have been working on. Naturally, the other one he had in mind, the one that urged Unkerlanter women not to give their bodies to King Mezentio’s soldiers, kept forcing its way forward.
He threw a stone at a gray squirrel on die gray bark of a birch. The stone slammed into the trunk a few inches to one side of the little animal. The squirrel scurried around to the far side of the tree, chattering reproachfully.
“Whore,” Garivald muttered. He chopped at a sapling. Unlike the squirrel, it couldn’t run away. He stuffed lengths of the trunk and the bigger branches into a leather sack he carried over his shoulder. As his body did the work, his mind roamed free. Two verses centered on the word
He quietly sang them to himself, weighing the sounds, seeing if the rhythm was right, looking for ways to make the verses better. By the time he went back to Zossen, he’d have them just the way he wanted them.
After singing them, he changed a couple of words, then sang them again. He was about to change one of the words back when someone behind him clapped his hands. Garivald whirled in alarm, his hand tightening on the hatchet’s handle. Some of the villagers thought the best way to get along with the Algarvians was to suck up to them. Anyone who tried taking this tale back to them would be sorry.
But the fellow who’d clapped didn’t come from Zossen. Garivald had never seen him before. He was skinny and dirty and mean-looking. Once upon a time, his grimy tunic had been rock-gray. He carried a stick; Garivald’s hatchet wasn’t much against it. He wasn’t pointing it at Garivald, though. Instead, he was nodding in slow approval.
“Good song,” he remarked, and his accent proved he hadn’t been born anywhere near the Duchy of Grelz. “Did you make it?”
“Aye,” Garivald answered before realizing he should have lied.
“Thought so--hadn’t heard it before,” the stranger said. “Aye, a good song. Sing it over, friend, so I get it straight.”
Garivald did, this time all the way through. The stranger listened, then made a peremptory gesture for him to do it again. Now, the stranger sang along. He had a good ear; he made few mistakes.
“My pals will like that,” he said. “Aye, in a few months people will be singing that all over the countryside. Not everyone’s given up against the Algarvians, no indeed, not even after their behemoths ran over us. What’s the name of your village yonder?”
