Page 10 of Circle of Days

The farmer men had used scratch plows, probably two men to pull each one, to break up the grassy soil. Then they had turned over the sods with wooden shovels. This allowed the seeds to sink into the ground. At this time of year they would probably plant barley, which grew quickly.

As Ani looked she became more worried. This seizure of land by the farmers would outrage many in the herder community. It could lead to something more than a battle. There could be war.

There had been no war on the plain in her lifetime, but she remembered her parents talking in solemn tones about a war that had taken place when they were young, a war between the herders and the woodlanders.

The issue had been herders coppicing hazel trees to make them grow the thin, bendy branches to be woven into wattle for house walls.

Coppiced hazel produced no nuts, and hazelnuts were a staple in the woodlander diet.

The war had ended with a compromise whereby the herders agreed to coppice only the trees on the outer fringes of the woods.

But a lot of people had died before peace was made.

“These farmers!” said Scagga. “They’re just thieves! They think they can take whatever they want!” Scagga had bulging eyes that made him seem even more aggressive.

Keff said mildly: “So it seems.”

Ani said nothing. It was best to let Scagga rave. He might be more reasonable afterward.

They went to the nearest herder settlement, a hamlet called Old Oak, and spent the night with a young couple, Zad and Biddy, who had a new baby.

Living in this remote spot, Zad and Biddy were thrilled to host visitors from the sophisticated east. The elders were woken in the night when the baby had to be fed, but they had all suffered that with their own children, and no one really minded.

In the morning they walked to Farmplace, the village on the north shore of the South River.

The farmers did not work collectively. Each man had a large field, a pasture for a few livestock, a house, and a small storehouse. Now, early in the summer, people were weeding the fields where green shoots of wheat were coming up.

Looking across the water, Ani saw that the farmers had already expanded to the other side of the river. A strip of fertile land there ended in a range of hills. The farmers had cultivated that strip even where it was only a few paces wide. Their hunger for fertile land drove them.

The elders found Troon in the center of the village, with a group of young men carrying heavy carved wooden clubs, a show of force.

Troon had small dark eyes and a permanent scowl.

He had been Big Man here for two years. Ani had met him before and found him to be clever, ruthless, and angry.

Right now he seemed to be suppressing a burning hostility.

A small crowd of villagers watched. Ani saw Pia and Stam, and was about to greet them when she remembered that they were not supposed to play with herder children. She saw Stam gazing at his father with an adoring look. Just don’t grow up like your Dadda, she thought.

Pia’s mother, Yana, was in the crowd. Ani had acquired some of Yana’s cheese and liked it.

Yana introduced Ani to her husband, Alno, who smiled pleasantly.

Ani had seen Yana again later that Midsummer Day, when the revel had begun.

Yana had been hand in hand with a handsome herder man a good deal younger than Alno, and they had been heading eagerly for the outskirts.

The farmers were keen on the revel, no doubt because their community was so small that everyone was related to everyone else, and inbreeding could be a serious problem.

Ani picked out two other familiar faces in the waiting crowd.

One was Katch, Troon’s woman, the mother of Stam.

She came across as nervous and fearful, as who would not be, stuck with a bully such as Troon?

But Ani had talked to her occasionally and got the impression she might have hidden strength.

The other familiar face was that of Shen, Troon’s right-hand man, a sly individual with an ingratiating smile and ever-shifting eyes. Ani noticed that Shen was wearing a flint axe attached to a leather belt, in imitation of Troon, who had exactly the same.

The elders approached Troon, and Ani tried to set a friendly tone, saying: “May the Sun God smile on you.”

He did not give the conventional reply. “What have you come here for?”

Ani smiled. “You’re an intelligent man, Troon.” She spoke in an emollient tone, but her words were uncompromising. “You know we’re here because you’re trying to steal grazing land that has been used by the herder community since before any of us were born.”

He was unapologetic. “That’s rich soil, wasted on grazing,” he said. “It’s good farmland and we need it.”

Scagga, standing next to Ani, said angrily: “You have no right to make that decision. It’s always been grassland and you can’t change that.”

Behind Troon, little Stam was making a noise.

He was shouting: “I’m a hunter,” and prodding other children with a stick, making them cry.

Troon turned and slapped the child’s face.

It was an open-handed blow, but forceful enough to knock Stam to the ground.

He burst into tears. Katch quickly stepped forward, picked him up, and walked away with him in her arms.

Stam was going to have a black eye. Ani believed that children had to be chastised sometimes, but knocking them to the ground was going too far.

Troon resumed the argument as if nothing had happened. “You herders have plenty of grazing land—almost the entire Great Plain! You don’t need the Break—we do.”

Scagga was bursting with indignation. “You can’t steal something simply because you need it!”

“I just did,” said Troon.

Scagga got angrier. “All right!” he said. “Plant your seeds. Pull up weeds. Watch your crop grow tall.”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“And then we will drive the herd across it and trample it all. And when you say to me: ‘You can’t do that!’ I’ll say: ‘I just did.’ Now, what do you say to that?”

Ani guessed that Troon had already thought of this possibility, and she was right. He pointed to the young men, who grinned and shook their weapons. Troon said: “Any cattle that trample our crops will be slaughtered.”

“You won’t be able to kill them all.”

“But at least we’ll have plenty of meat.”

Ani saw that this was getting nowhere. She said: “We’re not here to threaten you, Troon. We’re just finding out what’s happened, so that we can report to the other elders and the herder community.”

Scagga added: “And they’re going to be very angry about this.”

Unnecessary, Ani thought, but it makes him feel better.

“Go ahead,” said Troon. “Be angry. But the Break is farmland now, and it always will be.”

The elders turned away and left, heading for home.

Ani was tired the next day. She supposed it was because she had walked all the way to Farmplace and back in two days.

Perhaps I’m getting old, she thought. How many midsummers have I seen?

Both hands, both feet, both hands again, and my left hand and my right thumb and one more finger.

Shouldn’t I be able to walk for two days without feeling tired?

Perhaps not.

The elders met at the circle of tree trunks in Riverbend. It was quiet and still. The trees had been created by the earth, and she sensed that the Earth God was here.

A lot of villagers came to the meeting, whether they were elders or not.

This was usual when there was something big to discuss.

Many of them just sat and listened, but occasionally they would have a collective reaction, sounds of agreement or doubt, surprise or disgust. This was useful to the elders, because they got an instant public response to what they said.

Ani began by saying: “Well, the farmers have dug up the entire Break, a large area of pasture that our herds have grazed for as long as anyone can remember. It’s also our path to the river, so now if we need to water cattle in the west of the plain we will have to drive them on a long detour, all around the far end of West Wood.

But Troon would not listen to our protest.”

Scagga spoke up impatiently. “We have to start making arrows—flint-headed arrows. We’ll need as many as there are farmers to be killed. More, probably, as archers sometimes miss. And bows.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ani. She knew that Scagga had been born in some faraway place, and had been driven away by a war—a war that in his mind he still wanted to fight.

He had to be restrained. “We haven’t decided to go to war, and we won’t make that decision if I have anything to do with it.

” She saw women in the audience nodding agreement.

Scagga said: “We outnumber the farmers! There must be ten of us to every one farmer. Maybe more. We can’t lose.”

“Perhaps,” Ani said. “But how many of our people will have their skin pierced by arrows, their heads smashed by clubs, their flesh sliced open by sharp flint knives? How many of us will be killed before we can say we have won?”

Keff intervened. “Too many,” he said. “War is a last resort, Scagga, not a first response.”

Good for you, calm Keff, thought Ani, with your black beard and your big belly.

Scagga said: “If we let them get away with this, they won’t stop! How much more land are we willing to lose?”

The young men murmured agreement with that. Young men were quick to anger, Ani had noticed. She hoped her Han would not turn out that way.

Encouraged, Scagga added: “They won’t be satisfied until they’ve dug up the entire Great Plain!”

There were louder shouts of assent from the young men.

Ani stepped in. “We should bargain with them. Let them have extra land, as long as they don’t block our access to water or pasture, or interfere in any way with our herds.”

“You’d have us all be cowards!” said Scagga.

“I’d have us all alive,” Ani retorted.

The argument raged, with many villagers joining in; but in the end most people came round to Ani’s point of view, and there was no war.

Not yet.

The news reached Farmplace a few days later.

Yana had a she-goat tethered to a post and was milking her, the warm liquid squirting into a shallow pot. Pia was watching, holding the goat’s head to keep her still. Troon came striding along, all sneering triumph. “I told you so!” he said.

Pia had been taught that kind people never said that.

Yana did not look up from her work. “What did you tell me, Troon?” she said in a tone of weary tolerance.

“The herders are cowards.”

“And what has happened to make you so sure you’re right?”

“A traveling man has come here, who sings and plays a drum for food and a place to sleep. He was in Riverbend before, and someone told him the whole story of us cultivating the Break, and the herders squealing and threatening war. But they told him they had decided not to have a war. So there!”

“Sensible people. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

He was enjoying this, Pia could tell. She said: “How many enemies do you think we’ve made?”

“What?”

“I’m asking how many enemies we made with your venture. Too many to count, I suppose, since no one knows how many herders live on the plain.”

“I don’t care. They’re all cowards.”

“You don’t mind being hated?”

Troon grinned, showing uneven teeth. “Mind?” he said. “I love it.”