It was the ideal place for her to begin. She could fashion simple things at once, and the complexities of the craft could be left until she became interested. The pot so fascinated her that she didn’t notice when Arne left.
He busied himself with a number of petty chores. He checked the maintenance at the mills—all of the machinery was old, and it broke down frequently if it wasn’t properly cared for. He also made certain the orders from the court were being handled properly and supplies of meat and flour were being distributed again throughout the peerdom. Food reserves had been depleted while the lashers were guarding the village. He saw that his own private food cache was well stocked. By artfully juggling records, he kept a secret store of food in a stone shed at the rear of his garden. Old Marof, working quietly in the dead of night, wheeled bags of grain and an occasional haunch of beef or mutton to the shed in his barrow. An increasing amount of food had gone that route in recent years, but few villagers knew this. Those who did neither asked nor wanted to know what became of it. As in the past, some found its way into secret reserves the League of One-Namers maintained all across the Ten Peerdoms, but most went to Egarn’s team—his helpers took whatever supplies were needed, entering Arne’s garden at night through the concealed door in the wall.
It was late morning when he finished his chores, and he left at once for Midlow Court. The twenty-four members of the former prince’s guard were waiting in orderly ranks just outside the court gate. The land warden had formally restored their numbers, telling them Arne requested it. Now they were the first server’s guard. Whatever he told them to do they were to do instantly, or the peer would condemn them to a worse punishment.
They had been fanatically loyal to the prince. That loyalty now belonged to Arne, reinforced by an emotion lashers rarely experienced—gratitude. They were embarrassingly worshipful and eager to please him.
Here, thanks to Deline’s disgrace, was the beginning of an army, something he and Inskor had long advocated in vain. What it became depended on him, and he hadn’t the faintest notion of what he should do with it. His vague intention was to train these lashers as officers for the troops he would obtain later, but how did one train an army officer, and what did one train him to do? The lashers had lost their horses and their whips. The horses could be returned to them, but they had to be armed differently. A whip, however skillfully wielded, would count for little in battle.
With the land warden’s assent, he sent a message to Inskor, asking for an Easlon scout to train the new army. The Ten Peerdoms would never have a force large enough to stand up to the mounted hordes of Lant. Their army would have to conserve its strength and substitute skill for might, doing battle only under conditions of its own choosing and trying to inflict maximum destruction with minimum loss. It would be an army of scouts.
Arne first examined the lashers’ cruelly cut backs and saw that they were dressed properly. Then he took them on a walk through the forest. The ground was uneven. The path rose and fell steeply, and by the time they returned to Midlow Court, the lashers were exhausted and visibly wilting. Probably none of them had ever walked so far.
He placed their former commander in charge and instructed him to begin a regimen of physical conditioning with several long walks each dae. He wanted them away from the corrupting influence of the court, so he asked one of the peer’s servers to find housing for them at a remote no-name compound. Then he went to the Land Warden with another request.
As soon as the former guardsmen were adequately trained, he wanted to begin drafting lashers from the no-name compounds for his new army. He also wanted no-namers who could be formed into military labor platoons. He had already discussed the necessity of this with Inskor. The Ten Peerdoms needed a defensive barrier along their entire southern frontier, and that would require enormous amounts of labor.
The land warden referred the question to the peer’s council, which consisted of the prince, the wardens, and other advisors. None of them objected, not even the no-name warden, who had the responsibility for the peerdom’s lashers and no-namers. All of these stuffy officials had just seen the former prince lose one of her names, and at this juncture none of them were inclined to oppose the peer’s first server.
The new prince listened attentively, but she said little. Afterward, she conferred with Arne privately. “Have you any advice for me?” she asked.
“These are times of conflict, Highness,” Arne said. “We defeated a threat from the west. There may be others, but the real danger lies in the south. Eventually the Peer of Lant will cross the mountains and turn north, and there is no other barrier to stop her. We should have begun our preparations long ago. When the Lantiff come, we must fight—and win—or those of us who survive will be the slaves of Lant.”
“I have heard Lant has thousands and thousands of mounted lashers, and they sweep over the land like plague and fire combined.” She walked to the window and looked out. “It is hard to imagine that happening here. Do you think it could?”
“It could and will if we don’t prepare to stop it. Perhaps we will fail and it will come anyway. But we must do our best.”
She turned. “You stopped the wild lashers in the west,” she said. “I don’t understand battles. You must tell me what to do.”
“The peerdom is home to all of us, Highness. One-namers are willing to fight and die for that home. That is why they fought the wild lashers so fiercely, but they would be helpless before the armies of Lant. There are too few of them. We can’t begin to defend ourselves against Lant unless each of the Ten Peerdoms contributes as much as possible—not only one-namers, but also lashers and no-namers. All must be trained with care and determination so they know what they have to do and how to do it.”
The prince listened with a frown. Her sister had been ruled by impulses, but Elone Jermile would consider every move carefully and try to understand what was involved before she made up her mind. She would make few wrong decisions, but she might be unable to act quickly.
She summoned her uncle the land warden, who was waiting in the next room, and asked him, “How can we make the other peerdoms help? Should we send an emissary to them?”
“That would be the way to begin,” the land warden said.
They discussed the different peers and how they were likely to react.
“Could Arne be the emissary?” the prince asked finally.
“Of course he could,” the land warden said. “But with the peer dying and your sister deposed, he is needed here.”
“Then we must find someone else.” She looked to Arne for suggestions.
Things were happening with an ease Arne found difficult to believe. “Perhaps we should wait until the scout from Easlon arrives,” he said. “If each peerdom sent us a hundred lashers tomorrow—which wouldn’t make much of an army—I would have no idea what to do with them. I could arrange to feed and house them, but their training must be left to someone who knows how.”
They agreed to wait until the Easlon scout arrived before they asked the other peerdoms for help.
The prince’s final question concerned the new one-namer, Deline.
“I won’t know about her for at least a tenite,” Arne said with a smile. “By then, she will have made a beginning—if she is going to make one.”
He was curious himself as to how Deline was doing. When he returned to Midd Village, his first stop was Farlon’s pottery. He found the potter highly pleased with his new prentice. Deline learned quickly, she had deft fingers, and she produced common crockery with ease. Now he was letting her experiment with different kinds of clay. She had modeled an oddly shaped object of curved surfaces and fragile loops, and she sat looking at it intently. Arne was pleased she had found something to interest her even though she seemed thoughtful rather than enthusiastic.
She remained so in the days that followed. She did everything expected of her and did it well. She was cooperative, she was polite to her fellow workers and the villagers she came in contact with, but she shared nothing of herself. It was as though her real self were imprisoned beyond their reach.
She worked with the prentices and quickly learned the rudiments of the more important crafts. She traveled about with Arne, learning to walk long distances; learning to look for damage or wear in anything from roads to machines; learning the procedure for arranging repairs when she found the need for them. Arne showed her how to check inventories and order new supplies when stocks on hand dropped below an acceptable level.
Together they helped one-name foresters survey stands of timber and mark trees for cutting, fell them, saw them into logs. Then they watched no-namers haul the logs to a stream so they could be floated down to the river,
