The King's Peace by Jo Walton

Author:Jo Walton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472107459
Publisher: Constable & Robinson

—24—

In the morning battle,

at noon meat

at night rest.

— Isarnagan proverb

It was raining when we brought Galba ap Galba home. It was not the fine light rain that often marks the end of summer; it was a heavy rain that fell day after day from thick grey clouds and stripped the leaves from the trees and made riding misery. The wind blew cold and constant from the west. All the way down through Tevin, through Nene, through Tathal, and on into Magor it rained until the highroads were slick with water and all the tracks away from the highroads were deep with mud. In some places the mud was dark and sticky and came up to Beauty’s fetlocks. I thought it no wonder we saw so few people as we traveled.

Urdo had thought to bury Galba with the other dead. There were too many of them to burn. Fifty-two of ours we might have managed, at some cost to the forest, but not six thousand Jarnsmen. So they were given to the earth in the new way, and great mounds were built below the hill at Foreth where they lie still in honor, their weapons beneath their feet. Galba alone of those who fell on the field was carried home and given back to fire and air in the old Tanagan way.

It was Emlin who changed the High King’s mind, coming to us almost as soon as we were back down Foreth Hill and before we had dismounted. Ohtar had decided to walk back down. Urdo had just sent Ulf off and had pushed back his hair and drawn breath to say something to me as Emlin came up. Emlin looked nervous but resolute, and his hair was shorn so short that from above I could almost see his neck.

“My lord,” he said, to Urdo, and added “Praefecto,” to me, perfunctorily but politely, establishing this as a formal and not a friendly conversation. “My lord, they said they are going to bury the Captain, I mean my praefecto Galba ap Galba. I have put a guard around his body or they would have taken him already.”

Urdo swung down to the ground and summoned the groom with a twitch of his head. He did not look as if he wanted formality. “Glyn’s people were only following my orders,” he said, as ap Caw led the red horse away, “to have everything ready for sunset. What is the matter?”

“My lord, he was heir to his father’s land, and three of his grandfathers shared his name and lie on that land, and he loved it so. The old Duke would want him to come home, all those he led know he would have wanted it.” I looked around. There were indeed more than a few of Galba’s people hanging around watching us anxiously. They had all cut their hair short. I realized as I saw this that they had done this not for close friends or fallen kindred but for Galba, their captain. They had served under him since Caer Lind, but all the same this was something I had never seen.

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