kar.”
Rebba offered his hand to Esk kar as they arrived. “A spring day like this is too pleasant to spend indoors.”
They sat on benches beneath a willow tree, at a table whose surface was gouged and pitted, no doubt from numberless days of chopping and cutting vegetables. A young girl of nine or ten seasons, one of Rebba’s grandchildren, brought cool water for them to drink.
Rebba waited until they drank before speaking. “I offer my congratulations again on your victory, Captain. Trella tells me that you wish to learn more about farming. Where would you begin?”
Esk kar knew nothing about farming and wished to know even less.
Farmers were the least important people in Orak. In fact those that actually farmed the land rarely visited the village, except for those few, mostly wives, that came each morning to sell their goods in the market, or the men who visited the smith’s to have some tool repaired. Nevertheless Trella had insisted he learn something about farming, so he put another smile on his face.
“Noble Rebba, I know little about farming. I know that farmers provide much of the food for Orak, but I grew up among the barbarians and they don’t think highly of farming.”
“They consider us dirt diggers, do they not?” Rebba answered with a laugh. “I suppose that’s true enough. But they do enough farming on their own, despite what they think of us.” He saw the look of puzzlement on Esk kar’s face. “Ah, I see that you are not aware of how important farming is even to the Alur Meriki.” He stroked his beard. “Perhaps that’s as good a place to begin as any.” He turned to Trella, sitting at Esk kar’s side. “I understand you grew up in a village to the south. Did you learn the ways of the farmers there?”
“No, Noble Rebba,” Trella answered. “I know very little about the mysteries of the farmer and the herder.”
“Then I’ll try to explain a little to you both. A farm is not only a place to grow the wheat and barley, but a place to hold herds of goats, sheep, and other food animals. The barbarians herd their own flocks, even as we do, only they take them with them as they wander.”
“But they don’t plant crops,” Esk kar countered. “They’re never in one place long enough for crops to grow.”
“Ah, but they do harvest, Esk kar. But they do it in a different way.”
Rebba smiled. “The Alur Meriki harvest crops as they travel, looking for stands of barley, emmer wheat, even peas and other vegetables. These crops they encounter along the way are as important to them as they are to us. And there are many wild crops throughout the land, such as wheat, beans, and flax. They gather those as well.”
Esk kar accepted the correction. “Well, yes, I know the women gather anything they find on the march.”
“Exactly. Even warriors cannot live on meat alone. They need milk and cheese from the goats and cows, wool from the sheep, as well as vegetables and fruits from the lands they pass through. And of course, they seize much grain and other crops from the farmers of the lands they occupy. I’m sure you know a horse grows stronger and more powerful if fed a mixture of grains besides what it gathers grazing. So farming is as important to them as it is to us.”
“Yes, horses need grain,” Esk kar replied. “Whenever possible horses are fed a mixture of grains before being ridden hard.” He began to think along the lines Rebba had suggested. “And extra grain is carried to feed the horses when they raid, while the women bake bread for the warriors to carry with them.”
Bread was light enough to carry on horseback as well as nourishing, and would last longer without spoiling than meat. Esk kar’s men had done exactly the same when they rode out on their own scouting party. He’d forgotten these little details of steppes life, and now he realized they might be more important than he’d thought.
“Yes, bread is very important to us all,” Rebba agreed. “It is bread that feeds your soldiers. More than that, bread pays the wages of your soldiers.
Without bread, there would be no builders, smiths, taverns, or weavers.
Bread makes possible the trade on the river that brings you the lumber and ores from the north for your wall. Without bread, there would be no gold, no silver, no horses, no weapons. Without the farmer, there would be no great village of Orak.”
Despite himself, Esk kar had become interested. “I’m ashamed to admit I do not understand these things, Rebba. But I’m willing to learn.”
“You learn very quickly, Esk kar, as all of us have noticed.” Rebba smiled at that, and his eyes took in Trella as well. “But that’s all to the good. If you’re to defend the village, you should understand these things.
And don’t be embarrassed by your lack of knowledge; few even in Orak understand these things. It’s like the mystery of counting. That is a mystery I see you understand.”
Esk kar had never considered counting to be mysterious. Difficult, to be sure, and many men never grasped anything beyond the basic concept of ten fingers. But as a soldier, Esk kar had been forced to learn to count many things.
Like everyone he started with his fingers and some pebbles. You used your fingers to count to ten, then you moved a pebble from one hand to the other, and started over again. When you were finished, you counted your pebbles, knowing that each represented ten of whatever it was you were counting. In this way you counted how many men you had, exactly as you counted how many were with your adversary. You counted your arrows, your horses, your weapons, and even how many handfuls of grain you could feed to your horse.
“I didn’t know counting was a mystery, Rebba,” he said, “though I admit that I have difficulty when the sum is much over a hundred.”
“It is a very great mystery, and one I believe was discovered as men learned to farm. We learned to store grain in bushels, baskets, and sacks, and then count the sacks for storage or trade. Farmers had to learn how to divide grain among themselves, and they had to learn how many loaves of bread come from each bushel. A special part of that counting was learning how to divide up the land, so that each farmer could have the same amount of earth to sow. Now farmers know how to count into the thousands, and we’ve learned to mark these numbers in clay as a permanent record.”
Rebba sipped from his cup before he went on. “Did you know, it was something you said months ago that made me support you and your plan to fight off the barbarians? It was when you said that the barbarians would be back in another five or ten years. You’re right about their migrations.
It’s that cycle of migration we must break, and that’s why I decided to stay and resist. We may fail, but it must be tried. We can no longer rebuild everything we create every ten years at the whim of every passing band of marauders. The crops are too precious to lose, even for a single growing season.”
“What’s so valuable about the crops?” Esk kar asked, his curiosity aroused. “Crops have been burned many times in the past. They can always be replanted.”
“Ah, now we’re back to the mysteries!” Rebba answered, smiling again.
He stood up. “Come. Let’s take a walk down to the fields.”
They walked to the rear of the house, then went down a narrow dirt track that curved between the canals. Here rough planks that could be easily moved bridged the water channels, each barely wide enough to get a small cart across. In moments they were surrounded by crops-large fields of waist — high wheat and barley, smaller fields containing peas, len-tils, beets, and even some melons. Another field grew flax, which even Eskkar knew was grown not for food but for its stem fibers that could be spun into linen. There were other plants that Esk kar didn’t recognize.
The smell of animals had vanished and now the air held strangely pleasant odors given off by the growing plants, all of them at various stages of growth. The occasional fruit tree and jasmine added their scents to the air, and the mix of all these growing things combined to create a kind of perfume, hard to describe but somehow satisfying.
Rebba led them down a narrow path and soon they were surrounded by wheat, most of it still growing, but already above the farmer’s knees.
“This is emmer wheat,” he said, indicating the field on his left. “And this is einkorn wheat. These two are the most important crops on this farm. From them we harvest the seeds that we grind into flour to make bread. It’s the wheat that gives us the most food for each hectare.”
Rebba moved in among the growing plants, looking closely at some, glancing quickly at others. Finally he
