Once In a Blue Moon by Simon R. Green

Author:Simon R. Green
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE AND HATE

Round the back of Forest Castle, where hardly anybody goes because it’s just scrubby woodland and really poor hunting, there is another large and carefully maintained artificial clearing. Nowhere near as large, or as old, as the clearing made to contain Forest Castle, but still pretty important in its own right. It was hacked out of the woods by the Brotherhood of Steel, some sixty years previously, specifically so they could have somewhere to hold their annual Grand Tourney. The Brotherhood didn’t do it themselves, of course, manual labour being beneath their dignity. Instead they rounded up a whole bunch of local peasants, who didn’t seem to be doing anything important, paid them a pittance, and put them to work. Along with whoever happened to be on punishment detail in the Brotherhood’s Sorting Houses. These people came back so determined never to be put on punishment detail again, that even after the clearing had been established the Brotherhood continued to send whatever people they had on punishment detail to keep the clearing open and stop the woodland from creeping back.

For generations afterwards, the local peasants passed down stories of the great clearing they helped make. With an added moral to the tale: if you see the Brotherhood of Steel coming, run.

Permission to open up such a large clearing so close to Forest Castle had been provided by Parliament, on the grounds that it was better to have the Brotherhood’s greatest warriors fighting it out in one place rather than in the streets and bars of the towns and the cities. (Parliament and the Brotherhood agreed to split all the costs, and the merchandising revenue, between them, and that also helped to move things along.) No one even thought to inform King Rufus about any of this, until the deal was safely signed and settled. By which time it was far too late for anyone at Court to make any useful objections. This was perhaps one of the first real signs that no one outside the Court gave a damn what the King thought anymore.

And now the seasons had passed, and the time had come round again for the annual Grand Tourney to take place. People had been working out in the clearing from the moment the rising sun had provided enough light for the workmen to see what they were doing. There was a great deal to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. Tents and marquees had to be set up, and all kinds of stalls; fighting circles had to be marked out, and the single jousting lane. Several sets of raked seating had to be carefully assembled. And somebody really low down in the pecking order had to dig a whole bunch of latrines. The people in charge of all this were of course professionals, and very well paid for their services. The people who did the actual hard labour were also pretty well paid, because by this time they’d organised themselves into unions and guilds.

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