Buffy in Huntaworde – part 2
It was a pleasant meal for everyone. Buffy ate to her heart's delight, and found the food – slices of bread with sausage and cheese, and boiled root vegetables with herbs – hearty and tasty, and the company cheerful. Goldhair did most of the chat, as she had done at Isengard, half of it being to tell her family all the amazing things Buffy had done with the Lord Saruman, and half to tell Buffy all the interesting and admirable things about the village. Many of the things she said, Buffy only understood later.
Truth to tell, she was getting sleepy. The business with the stump had taken more out of her than she had realized. And having a large, well-cooked meal for the first time since she had fled Isengard also had its effect. Buffy had never in her life taken a siesta after lunch, but now she was beginning to feel decidedly sleepy. She begged Swerti's pardon and asked to be allowed a nap in the granary.
The bulding was almost empty, but a pile of straw still stood in one corner. Buffy lay down on it, and, as her thoughts slowly drifted away, found herself wondering. A few weeks ago, in Sunnydale, she would have hated the dry, itchy straw on her skin, and found the whole thing so uncomfortable that she could not have slept….
The afternoon light shone in her eyes, and she realized that she had fallen asleep and woken up again. Her senses told her wonderful things. Under the dominant smell of dry, clean straw, and of the stone and mold in the walls, there drifted from outside an immense, deep variety of rich living smells of grasses and grain and the distant resin of trees. She heard the buzz of insects and other tiny creatures, and, at some distance, the big, slow drumming of two oxen's hearts and the soft wheeze of their breath, and, in various directions, the sounds of several horses; and the mixed sounds of a human community reached her, muffled and confused through walls and wood. She heard the chatter of the river in the distance, cutting through the valley, bearing its waters to their destination far away. And near her, clean and friendly, she felt, even before she saw, the breath and smell and heartbeat of Goldhair, sitting in the straw, keeping watch.
And, alas, there also seemed to be something very much like a latrine, at some distance behind the granary and up the side of the hill.
Buffy immediately smiled at Goldhair, who smiled back. The two girls rose and patted each other to get rid of the crinkly yellow bits of straw. They walked out in the bright, warm afternoon, as Buffy began to take proper stock of the country she had ended up in, helped, of course, by the inevitable chatter of her friend.
The farm stood just outside the village walls, where the ground began to softly rise. The valley was large, larger than Buffy had first perceived when coming in from the side of the mountains, and its bottom and slopes had room for dozens of fields and orchards. Most of the land was under grain, but there were fields of different colours – meaning, Buffy was to find, different crops and plants, including peas, potatoes, carrots and onions. Paddocks were mostly inside the village walls, or near them, but there was a scattering of them in the more distant areas, for families who could not keep their horses near the home. Nobody, said Goldhair, lived outside the village walls. People went out in the morning to work in the fields, and came down at sundown, even in winter when days were short. It was inconvenient, but to be met by an Orc or a robber would have been worse.
Before Buffy could think of the right way to approach the matter, Goldhair turned to her. "Lady Baffy, my father wants to pay you for the work you did for him. Only he doesn't know what you would consider fair. He has asked me to ask you."
Buffy smiled. Well, this was rather more direct than she had expected. "I don't know, Goldhair. I'm a stranger here and I don't know what the price of things is. Just tell him to pay me what he thinks fair. And you might teach me more about how people pay here in Rohan."
"Well, my lady, he and I both think that four or five iron bars would be about right."
"Iron bars?"
"That's not good enough?"
"No, I… we don't use iron for…" (Buffy sought desperately in her magical knowledge of Southron for the word "currency", and she found it did not exist in the language) "...for payment, I mean. I was thinking of the silver that was mentioned in Lord Saruman's hall."
"Silver? Silver is very valuable, my lady… A drop of silver is the price of a month's work here. Most people never get to see it. Gold too." Goldhair looked slightly scared, and also worried that the offered payment might have seemed cheap to the mighty lady.
Buffy reached out to her. "I'm sorry, Goldhair, I'm just ignorant. I don't want to ask for crazy things. Iron will be fine, if iron is what you use. And I trust you – I mean, you and your father and your family. You will not cheat me."
"Well, iron is useful, too. You can use to make weapons, and I think you will need some. Four bars would be almost enough for a sword. Bronze is also useful, but that is mostly for tools."
"Weapons? Where do I get them?"
"We have a very good smith in Huntaworde, my lady. People come from the whole Westfold to get their swords and axes made by our Isenhand – Isenhand the Smith Isengrip's Son."
The girls went out, with Goldhair once again chattering nineteen to the dozen, explaining everything to Buffy, from the terracing that kept mountainside land from falling and made it cultivable, to the latrines built at various places in the valley to collect excrement and use them. Noting Buffy's incrudulous giggle, Goldhair assured her that she would not be expected to work on them – it was a few specialist families with inherited skills that built and ran them. But they were useful, you didn't have to have stinky spots in your own farm, and there were lots of things that skilled workers could do with the stuff. Buffy was left with the impression that nothing ever was wasted in this valley, if they could find any use for it.
That evening, Buffy sat at Swerti's table and had dinner with the family. Sitting by his fire, lit by the dancing flames, Swerti was the very image of the master of the house in his home. He was a large man in his forties, with a thick black beard not yet streaked with grey – unusual, Buffy already knew, among the Rohirrim. But in spite of his younger daughter's golden hair and lighter colouring, there was something about his straight features, high forehead and remarkable cheekbones that reminded her very strongly of her; and he was most like her when he laughed. His wife Brauna sat by his side, when she was not busy serving the meal – which seemed to be her exclusive province. She was a silent woman, looking and listening and not saying much; but Buffy was pleased to notice, in the course of the meal, that when she did speak, she was listened to, sometimes to the point of having the final word. Goldhair was the same chatterbox as ever, which Buffy was beginning to find comfortingly familiar; Swerthair, the older of the two, was rather more serious, with a sense of adult responsibility already opening before her.
The meal started with the payment of four bars of iron – substantial things, Buffy found, rather more than a pound each in weight. And Buffy also found that there was a little ceremony to go with legitimate payment, where she touched her hand to her employer's and said, "I am well paid, I thank you." "And I thank you for your work" was the proper answer.
During the meal there was a long discussion of where Buffy might find more paid work. There were several possibles that the family could think of. "For instance," said Swerti, "I think Farmer Geirbold would be happy to have the remains of his old farm pulled down so he can build a better one on the spot. That's a lot of work, but I think you could do it. And Geirbold is well off, he could pay you."
"You would have to break the walls up bit by bit, so he can re-use the stones," added Brauna, and everyone nodded. "It doesn't sound hard," said Buffy, and someone in the room gasped slightly.
"And talking about stones, Farmer Eofor is trying to clear his high field, that's full of rocks. It's back-breaking work, but I don't think it would trouble you, my lady." This was Swerthair.
Swerti disagreed. "More than hard work, it's long work. It would take her days and days, I think, and Eofor is not so well off that he can afford her for weeks." And they went on discussing prospects for work for someone with the lord Oromë's strength. Buffy, once again, had no idea who Oromë was, and she thought she would never remember to ask about all those things.
When they seemed to have reached the end of possible employers, Swerti turned to Buffy, and performed again that salute with bowed head and hand before chest. Buffy returned the salutation.
"Lady Baffy," he said, "here in the Westfold we have a custom. When a guest is to stay a night or more, we offer them of the best drink in our house, and we welcome them under our roof." And Brauna offered Buffy an elaborately carved wooden cup full of dark wine. Buffy knew nothing about wine, but it smelled delicious to her. Swerti raised a cup of his own, and said: "You are welcome under my roof, Lady Baffy."
"I don't know how to thank you properly, Master Swerti, so I hope the thanks I offer won't be gauche or inadequate. Thank you from the bottom of my heart."
Swerti laughed and started a song.
"The sun had set behind yon hills,
Across yon dreary moor…"
and both Brauna and Swerthair burst out laughing. Goldhair, also laughing, protested "Father, the Lady Baffy is not a boy!" "And neither is she a beggar," answered Swerti, "but I like the song, and it's of good omen."
"The sun had set behind yon hills,
Across yon dreary moor,
Weary and lame, a boy there came
Up to a farmer's door
'Can you tell me if any there be
That will give me employ..."
and at this point Brauna and the girls chimed in with the refrain:
"...to plough and sow, and reap and mow,
And be a farmer's boy!"
The song went on for four or five stanzas, describing the orphan boy's bad luck ("My father is dead, and mother is left With five children, great and small; And what is worse for mother still, I'm the oldest of them all…"), his life of hard work, and his inevitable good fortune. Buffy didn't think much of her tones, and did not normally sing even with her friends, but what the Heck! The song was fun, and the atmosphere was cheerful, and they'd had a good meal, and good ale to go with it, and that cup of wine; and so she joined Swerti, and Brauna, and Swerthair, and Goldhair, giving out the chorus as well as she could – "...to be a farmer's bo-o-oy, to be a farmer's boy!" And Goldhair laughed again, and said, "I still say that the Lady Baffy is no boy."
They sang a couple of other songs, Buffy joining in in the choruses as well as she could; and then it seemed the evening was over. Without much discussion, it had just seemed obvious to everyone that Buffy would sleep in the granary, as in the afternoon. Brauna kindly gave her two thick blankets to lie on and to cover her. At night, it could get cold, here in the mountains, even in summer.
As Buffy lay down to sleep with one blanket over her and another under her body and folded under her head to form a sort of pillow, she went back to the train of thought that had taken her to sleep in the afternoon. Back in Sunnydale, she knew she'd have hated every bit of straw, and found the breath of wind coming in from outside such a nuisance that she could not have slept. Here she felt warm, and sheltered, and safe, and knew that sleep would come soon. But her nights in the wild, between her flight from Isengard and her arrival at Huntaworde, had begun to awaken the huntress and the wild thing in her. Buffy had lived a sheltered, urban life, but the shadow of Sineya within her made her feel more at home with living in the open, sleeping under the stars, hiding on trees or in small caves, than she or her mother would ever have imagined.
Her thoughts softly slid into dreams, that she would probably not remember in the morning. She felt again her long, strange effort to move away from Isengard, of the doubts that had torn through her. In her dreams, there was no connection, but in reality, when she turned her back to the fortress, she had been seized a sense that she was giving up her last hope to ever go home. And she felt again the grip of those doubts, trying to drive her back to Isengard – the power, though she did not realize it, of Saruman cast around Isengard like a net to catch anyone leaving it without permission, and now raised and aimed at her.
Rationally, she had become convinced that Saruman had no way to reverse her journey there, and that even if he had, he would not let her go – he clearly still hoped to convince her to fight for him. But even before hunger and weariness had begun taking a toll, something had been eating at her confidence, strangling it like a weed. Buffy did not realize that she was feeling, Saruman's power, Rationally, Saruman did not expect her to succumb and return, but he was greatly angered by her flight, and would not let go without at least some more effort. For much of her time in the forest, she was going on more or less by dull, unthinking obstinacy, without any clear purpose… except, perhaps, that somewhere ahead lay Huntaworde.
…...
Buffy's first morning in Huntaworde was beautiful. She woke up between two thick woolen blankets spread over a heap of crunchy, clean-smelling hay. Her senses perceived an infinity of country smells, including the blessedly remote effluvia of a piggery; much closer were meadows in flower and the smell of cut, drying wood. And she could tell it was morning, with luminous sunlight and not much wind.
After a while, Goldhair, Swerthair and Brauna came to her with a package of clothes and a bag. "It's time to get washed," said Swerthair, "and to wash your clothes. I hope you'll enjoy it." They left the farm in the direction of the river, going uphill, and Buffy noticed that other women, of all ages, seemed to be walking, or in a few cases riding, in the same direction. "In the summer, all the women have their morning bath together in the Ladies' Lake, up there," said Goldhair, gesturing vaguely ahead and uphill. "It's great fun and a good start to the day."
"Uh, in my country we wash at home. And alone."
"Well, we do that in winter, but it's hard work and no fun. Really, that's one reason I love summer," said Goldhair, and her mother nodded."In the winter, we take water to our homes and wash in tubs, and you will see how it's done if you stay long enough. You have to take the water home, and heat it, and then you are alone with nobody to chat to and nobody to help you, and you wash your clothes all alone. But in the summer, we just go to the Ladies' Bend and the Ladies' Lake, and wash in the lake water."
As Buffy and her friends approached the water course, she could hear squeals of laughter, the noise of splashing, and the voices and sounds of dozens of women. Buffy saw more women, converging on the shore of a lake that was formed by the river striking a depression, or possibly stopped by an old beavers' dam. There already were hundreds of women of all ages and sizes in the water, washing and scrubbing themselves, and chatting and laughing. When they had come to the shore, her hosts stripped unselfconsciously, leaving their clothes to hang on one particular tree branch that seemed to be reserved for them. Buffy saw every other branch, it seemed, loaded almost to breaking point with clothes, underwear and shoes. She did as they had, and then they all ran into the water together.
"BRRRRRRR!" said Buffy, used to the Californian ocean, "It's cold!" And everyone laughed. "That's why we ran in, Lady Baffy. You just get it over at once." "Wait," said Swerthair, "have we found something that the mighty Lady Baffy can't cope with?" By way of an answer, Buffy threw a double handful of water at her.
When the laughing and mutual splashing were done, Brauna handed Buffy a thick, absorbent cloth, and a jar of a weird liquid mix that smelled nasty, but turned out to be the local version of soap. With the help of a little vigorous scrubbing, it cut through sweat and grime, not perhaps as efficiently as branded soap at home, but well enough. One little old lady took on herself to scrub Buffy's back for her. Then Goldhair and Brauna taught her how to wash her hair with vinegar. All the time, hundreds of women along maybe half a mile of lake shore were likewise washing, chatting, laughing together, even singing. After a while, she noticed that a number of women had begun, irregularly, each as she pleased, to take clothes into the water and wash them in turn. Shortly after, she saw Brauna, Goldhair and Swerthair start work on the bundle of dirty clothes each ot them had taken, and, again, she followed them.
Buffy looked at the water. Streaks of soap and dirt flowed slowly along between the bodies. She thought of home, and how impossible anything like that would be. Thousands, tens of thousands, of people washing together… pollution central. And yet here… these people had been doing this every summer for who knew how long, and the air was still clean, and the water still flowed clear and cool. Maybe a few thousand people weren't enough to bother Mother Nature in this beautiful mountain land. She hoped they never came to find out:
Then a thought occurred to her. "Does it ever happen that a guy hides somewhere near, and, you know, has an eyeful?"
The women laughed. Brauna said: "I won't say it's never been known to happen. But when we wash, the men go off and wash too, in their own lake on the other side of that ridge -" she gestured to her left. "So they're busy, and pretty much everyone knows where everyone else is supposed to be. And then, the fact is that there isn't much cover around the Ladies' Water. You can't easily hide. And anyone who gets found gets, first, roughed up by a mob of women, and then, if he survives that, gets mocked for the rest of his life by the other men for a Peeker." The way Brauna said it, charged with contempt, Buffy was sure it was a serious insult.
"Now, Lady Baffy, tonight the girls and I are going to start repairing your clothes, and teaching you to sew and knit, I hope." Buffy started to thank her, and Brauna shut her down. "Bur as today you are apt to have visitors, we have put together this lot. We hope it fits you." And she began to hand Buffy, first, a set of underthings – a skin-tight woolen top, a pair of long underpants reaching to her knees, and a pair of long socks – and then a skirt and blouse fronted by a sort of pinafore. Buffy had never worn a long skirt in her life, but she was surprised how comfortable it felt. She still had her own shoes, she guessed because her feet were smaller than any of theirs, and she noticed that someone had brushed them. She was beginning to feel that her debt of gratitude to Goldhair's family was getting rather long, but, when she tried to say something on the subject, Swerthair shut her smartly up. "You have no idea how much you did for us just with that stump, yesterday, my lady. It's we who are in your debt. And besides, you are our guest."
"Oh, all right. What's this about visitors to see me?"
"We think there will be a lot of people who will want to meet you. A new guest is always news. And then there are all the people we discussed last night, who might have work for you. So today you will sit in the open, in front of our house, and meet people."
And it was so. Almost as soon as the crowd of women and men had dispersed to their various work places and homes, and Buffy had sat down in Swerti's front yard in a chair he provided, people began to come and introduce themselves. Some were just curious to meet the Swertingas' already famous guest, but quite a few had offers of paid work. Gramps Roymer, a sprightly old tailor, wanted the wreck of an old cart broken up and turned to firewood, and was willing to offer the metal parts in payment; quite a generous offer, Goldhair signalled. Two or three people had stumps to be uprooted. Farmer Eofor was only one of three or four who wanted fields cleared of stones or broken walls; each time, Buffy asked to inspect the field in question and then agree time and price.
Buffy herself recognized one of the village guard who had met her the previous day, and asked for a word. "I've got this thing where I really sleep very little at night. Only two or three hours. So I go out and patrol. Would you tell the other guards about it, so they don't worry if they see me? Perhaps I might stand on the walls with you people for a while." The man thanked her and said he would pass the word.
In general, the Rohirrim of Huntaworde struck her as businesslike and clear-headed. They made their proposals quickly and clearly, and did not seem intimidated by the power they obviously faced in her. Geirbold, the rich farmer Swerti mentioned, looked like he might be a problem, coming as he did in an expensive embroidered tunic and fur-lined boots, with half a dozen kinsmen and employees and a rather handsome young woman half his age by his side. (Buffy felt Goldhair and Swerthair stiffen when she came in.) But he was no less polite than anyone else, and as matter-of-fact as anyone. It was the fee he offered that startled her: for the systematic demolition of his old farmhouse, saving the stones for re-use, he offered a one-year-old colt.
Buffy had never thought of that at all. "A horse? But… where would I stable it? And I don't know how …"
Goldhair was startled at her reaction, and, typically, expressed it. "But, Lady Baffy! That's a noble payment! A colt with twelve years' work in him, at least! And of course you can stable it in our paddock. Surely you want a horse..."
Old Roymer, who had been a pedlar and a merchant in his youth, broke in: "The Lady Baffy is a foreigner, Goldhair. In other countries, they don't understand how we feel about horses. Why, in Mundburg itself, you will find noblemen – big, rich noblemen – who have no horses at all!"
Goldhair's jaw literally dropped, while both her father and Geirbold nodded slowly, with the air of people acknowledging a strange and incomprehensible fact. "Even the Steward's Guard go on foot."
Buffy understood then. These people really were Horse-Men – it was not just a nickname. She remembered various expressions and scraps of conversation. When they wanted to describe a beggar or a bum, the Rohirrim spoke of "a horseless wanderer." To be without a horse was to be less than a man, less than a member of the community.
But there were other undercurrents that Buffy was yet to realize. When lunch was served, the atmosphere in Swerti's house was stormy. Something had infuriated the sisters, and Swerti and Brauna looked unhappy. Goldhair could hardly wait to start.
"Did you see her, standing there like the colt was her own, like Geirbold was already her man? What was she doing here at all?"
"It was all to humiliate us," growled Swerthair. Buffy looked at the sisters in bewilderment.
"I know. Look, Mother, Father, Swerthair, I'm sorry I let it get me. I should never have said it was a noble payment. Did you see her smirk?"
"Don't blame yourself," said Swerti heavily. "It was a noble payment. It needed saying, and the Lady Baffy needed to be told. And you were talking about Geirbold, not about her."
Buffy must have looked as bemused as she felt, for Swerti turned to her. "The woman who was with Geirbold – Sigebealdu, his fiancée – is not exactly a friend of ours. The girls think that she got him to make all that show – turning up here with all his servants like a lord at the King's Hall in Edoras,"
"And did he?"
"Let us put it this way: he never used to behave that way before he became engaged to Sigebealdu."
Over the following days, Buffy settled down into a regular rhythm of going out into the village or into the fields in the morning, to work, or, on days when she had nothing to do, to meet people and socialize; and, in the evening, to learn cutting, sewing and knitting under the guidance of Brauna and the girls. It was mostly a pleasant existence, where Buffy felt useful and welcome. After a while, she understood that she had been a bit of a problem for the good people of Huntaworde. The village men and women tended to live pretty separate lives, and they don't know how to place Buffy. After a few days, they accept her as something that crossed the lines, and became used to seeing her both with the women and among the men.
Her favourite times were when she was invited to go hunting with some of the young men. The village was not called the Hunters' Field for nothing. Surrounded by mountains and dense woods on all sides, the opportunities for profitable hunts were amazing. And the local hunters were so good that she found herself – she, the heiress of Sineya! - learning from them. She also suspected that she might be useful in other ways. The woods were not altogether safe. Once or twice, young hunters who went alone had never come back. And Buffy suspected she knew why, because on her very first hunting outing, she smelled orc – the smell she had become familiar with in Isengard weeks before.
They always hunted on foot, which after a while got her thinking. It was amazing how much effort these people put into having horses, for how little reward. They did not hunt on horseback: the woods were too thick to risk horses in them. They did not have races; the uneven mountain ground would risk breaking the horses' legs – and once that had happened, Buffy was told, there was nothing to do but kill the poor animal. Horses, yes, were sometimes used as draft animals, but oxen – stronger and more patient – were preferred. They rode them when travelling, and she was told that they would thresh the grain when harvest-time came, but that seemed a small return for all the time, work and cost that went into keeping, feeding and looking after the animals. Each family had at least a colt or two to their name, and a paddock with a stable to house them. (The poorer the family was, the more distant the paddock was from the village; if Buffy had known that at the start, the distance of Swerti's paddock from his home would have told her a lot.)
People remembered Buffy from Isengard, and soon she began to help with their training, as they had seen her do in Saruman's fortress. All the men of Huntaworde regarded themselves as warriors, and one day in every five they would meet in the village centre and prepare for all kinds of combat from bow and arrow shooting to wrestling. Buffy could help with most specialities, and as she helped, she had got into a habit of chatting with them. And it was talking with the warriors, especially the heads of households, that made it clear to her that the prestige of horses had to with status and war. It was the ambition of all adult men to have at least "two horses and a man" for the fyrd, the gathering in arms, which was their duty to their king; one horse to ride, and one for a spare and to carry gear and provisions, and a follower, a kinsman or a servant, to be helper and groom the beasts. If a family's horses died through no fault of their own, the whole village saw to it that they were found a colt or two to rear. All free men in Huntaworde, indeed in Rohan, were warriors; but those with not enough horses were left in the unmounted troop, which was only intended for local defence, while the king's cavalry ranged across the country and went on great expeditions abroad. Valiant horsemen could be invited to the king's court and given land and honour.
And that was why horses were looked after and kept as treasures. Couplings of stallions and mares were negotiated almost as carefully as marriages, and failures or refusals had been known to set families against each other. People rarely sold the ones they had, even if they had too many; they preferred to give the excess ones to a favoured kinsman or friend, to raise them to the rank of King's Horseman in turn. Farmer Geirbold had no less than four certain King's Horsemen in his family, riding his horses and following him; that was why his paying Buffy with a colt had been a sensation. It was not only Goldhair who had been stunned by it – though admittedly the job had been a gigantic one, and paying for a gang of workers might have been worse for Geirbold in the long run. But it was universally seen as a meaningful act. Geirbold was widely thought to be preparing to make a bid to become lord of Huntaworde, because the current lord had himself risen sharply in the King's court and might be ready to sell the title for silver he would need in Edoras.
Later Buffy found that the Lord of Huntaworde was not the same person as the Marshal of the King's Horsemen in the Westfold, who commanded all the cavalry in the region, and whose approval was sought by every Horseman. The Marshal was a man called Erkenbrand, elderly but tough as old hickory, and with a frightening eye for the weakness and sloppiness of any warrior. He turned up out of the blue one fine morning, and inspected every horseman and foot warrior he could meet. He was interested to hear about Buffy's training, and questioned her throughout the evening about her methods and goals. He left without saying anything, which, according to Swerti, was a good thing: if he had had any problem with her presence, her character, or her work, she, and everyone else, would have heard about it. He was certainly merciless with people who fell short of his standards, whether mounted or not, and most often Buffy had agreed with his assessments.
Those months of summer were good for working and for making friends. People always found work for Buffy to do and be paid, so as time went on she was able to pay to have her colt stabled and looked after, by a child cousin of Goldhair's.
After she had been working and earning metal bars for a couple of weeks, she had a scare. She found a man she did not know – a "horseless wanderer", they told her later – trying to raid her metal stash in Swerti's granary. It took little enough effort to run him down and drag him to the village square, where she found that customary law allowed her to deliver a beating herself. A few slaps, delivered before the whole village, were enough to have the man running away howling; but Buffy was reminded that she needed to spend that metal as well as earn it. It was time to start arming herself properly.
Buffy was naturally fascinated by weapons, and had never seen a sword or a pike being made before. So she had already gravitated to the smith's forge, as indeed did many of the village youth. Now she approached him about making her weapons, taking her iron bars with her.
"Four bars of iron for an iron sword, four and a half for bronze, five for a steel blade," answered the huge man promptly. Then, as if he had had a second thought, he started again: "Actually, Lady Baffy, if you can escort me on my journey across the mountains and back, in four days or so, I will make the best steel sword I can for you for no other payment." He would say nothing more, except that the journey would take no more than three days; an intrigued Buffy accepted. Swerti and his family could not enlighten her either. "Smiths have their secrets, you know," said Swerti. "Some people fear them, same as if they were magicians or elves."
When the time came, Buffy found that Isenhand had prepared a huge, solid cart, whose content, covered by thick blankets, rattled and clanged as it moved, and with two of the biggest oxen she had ever seen pulling it. Isenhand invited her to sit down on it, but she smiled and said she would walk. If any kind of help was necessary, she said, she could give it faster on the ground. Neither she nor he actually said that, by "help", she meant "fighting."
Isenhand drove the team and the carriage right into what seemed like a thick part of the wood; and yet Buffy found that, somehow, the smith managed to pass the team and the cart right through the apparently dense plants, as if there was a path open to them that she could not see. And the smith, in turn, was looking at her with interest, saying nothing. Once or twice, Buffy stiffened, as her sensitive nostrils caught the smell of orc or of wild bear, but nothing came within reach. After about two hours of slow, laborious climb through trunks and rocks, Buffy realized that they had reached the top of a ridge, and were going down. Then the land opened, into a mountain pasture, and Buffy smelled something else, that she had never smelled before – at least, not so close. She noticed that the smith was turning the team and carriage towards what looked like a huge heap of stone rubble; and then, out of the rubble, came four dwarves.
Buffy could not tell how she could be so sure that they were dwarves. In her own world, she had never met any. She guessed it was because of their short size – their hats barely reached to her shoulder – their squat, powerful build, nearly as wide as high; and maybe because of something in their figure and complexion that, somehow, suggested stone.
Their faces seemed naturally set towards grumpiness, but the one who came first managed what seemed like a smile, almost cracking his weathered features. He seemed genuinely delighted to see Isenhand. "Welcome to my delvings, friend Isenhand. And who is your companion?"
"She is the Lady Baffy, a newcomer and guest in Huntaworde. Don't be misled by her size, she is a great warrior."
"Why should I doubt that, when we are what we are? Size doesn't matter. Lady Baffy, you are welcome to my delvings." She saluted as she had learned, bowing with her hand before her breast,.and he answered with a clumsy bow from the waist. "I am Caudhi, and these are Blothi, Manir, and Bonvi." Then, turning back to Isenhand: "And what have you brought us, friend?"
"Have a look," said the smith, whipping the blankets off the cart. "I don't think you will be disappointed."
And indeed the four dwarves were delighted. The cart was full of shiny new metal objects, weapons and tools and armour, all designed for dwarves to use. Buffy looked in surprise. From what she had seen in his smithy, these objects must represent weeks, maybe months of work.
"Yes," he smiled, "and the fact is that Caudhi and his people could make these things just as well as I can. As a matter of fact, I learned some of my trade from them. But this arrangement is good for us both. Caudhi and his family are building a dwarf town, digging into the mountain. The ore is a by-product of their building and digging, and they let me have all I can carry in exchange for finished items. This is one of my secrets, Lady Baffy, and I trust you not to spread it."
"Yes," said the dwarf. "People will know when the delving is ready and other dwarves move in, but at present we would rather not be known."
"I see you have built more defences," said the smith, though whatever he was speaking of was invisible to Buffy.
"Yes," said the dwarf. "The moutnains are getting dangerous. You did well to take a warrior with you. And at this point, we really don't want any trouble – I really shouldn't tell you, but I would be ashamed to keep it a secret. Manir over there is pregnant." Buffy was astonished: she had taken Manir for a male, she was so entirely like the rest. "Yes," said Isenhand, "dwarf women look just like their men. Well, that is wonderful news. Congratulations to you both, and may you soon be the head of a tribe."
As they were making their way back through the forest, Isenhand turned to Buffy (barely visible beneath the mass of a couple of tons of ore wrapped in blankets), and asked: "You noticed the dwarves before you saw them, did you not?"
"Yes. They had a smell… a feel… I had never smelled before, but it did not feel bad."
"And did you smell… feel… anything else strange on the path on the way up?"
"Yes. There had definitely been orcs and wolves at a couple of places. But that had been weeks ago, at least. I felt nothing recent." Isenhand grumbled and went on without commenting.
Not all days in Huntaworde were busy. There were times when the work of the earth did not demand anything, the warrior training was done and dusted, and the cattle and sheep were in their grazing lands. Then people just drifted into the village and met, in the open, or, if it rained, in the inn. And they stood around, and talked, and talked, and talked. Sometimes they burst into song. Talk and choral song seemed to be their substitute for TV, cinema, sports and entertainment. After a few weeks, Buffy realized that she did not miss them, and was not nearly as bored as she would ever have thought if someone had told her that she would lose all the entertainment media of her culture.
There were more organized times, little holidays when people gathered formally and the best learned people in the village told stories and sang songs. There were families who had a reputation for song or lore; Geirbold's rich extended kin, in particular, were said to be particularly learned. While Geirbold was listened to when he sang a song or told a story, the real village champions were his cousins, the brothers Hardgrip and Hardgeir. At first, Buffy mostly sat around and listened. But after a few days had passed, some of the locals asked her if she knew any stories. They even asked Buffy to teach them some of the stories she has been telling when her time to talk around the fire came.
The earth imposed tasks on the village according to the seasons. About four weeks after her arrival, one morning the whole village seemed to pour out, men, women and children, into the woods. It was the season for the blossoming of a flower Buffy did not know, called thermiss. Picked and dried in the sun, thermiss petals made wonderful spice to flavour meat and potato and bean dishes. For two weeks, all the people who could be spared were in the woods – organized in bands, with the adults bearing weapons and keeping the children well in sight. The locals did not need Buffy to tell them that the woods could hold Orcs, or human robbers, or beasts of prey. There were also more fabulous fears, of giants of wood like trees; and, of course, elves.
(Buffy had heard enough stories about elves, by now, to make a joke of it. But she wondered whether she would ever see any.)
A few days after the hunt for thermiss was done, the village was shaken and brightened by the arrival of strangers in colourful clothes, each accompanied by a few armed servants, who went from house to house to ask for the dried thermiss and haggle over the price. When the thermiss was sold, the strangers – peddlers, said Goldhair – had other things to buy and sell. Swerti bought several rolls of paper – expensive and heavy – a two-pound block of salt, and a jar of black pepper, and turned down with a smile a clutch of silken ribbons. Goldhair giggled at that. Buffy looked curious, and Swerthair said, giggling in her turn: "He is asking whether we are getting married this year."
In the evening there was a party in the camp the peddlers had thrown up. The village people came out in their best finery, and there was a meal at which there was a lot of talking about news from outside. The peddlers travelled across Rohan and beyond, they sold thermiss and other Rohan goods – even the occasional horse – as far as Mundburg and the Great River, and they carried news. And they themselves liked to know what had been done there in the mountains, since they had last come before. News were brought from distant Stoningland, and even further, from the shores of the sea, where distant lands with exotic names such as Unbar and Mordor and Harad were rumoured to be readying for war. The expulsion of the Rohirrim from Isengard was discussed in grave, occasionally angry tones; and Buffy was widely spoken of, but nobody asked her for feats of strength. As the sun went down, four of the peddlers' servants took up some small drums, a flute and a couple of stringed instruments, and started playing; and the village girls went to dance with peddlars and servants. It was very good music, better than anything she had heard yet, and it seemed that those servants were specialists. Buffy sat together with the older folks and some of the girls, and wondered why neither Swerthair nor Goldhair were dancing. Swerthair gave her rather a kittenish smile. "Well, neither of us has a boy, you see." "And there is no fun in dancing with the peddlers if you don't have a boy to be jealous," added her sister with a giggle.
Then the sisters took a serious expression. "Wait for us a little, Lady Baffy," said Goldhair, as they both rose. Buffy watched them curiously, talking with the peddler who had visited Swerti's house for thermiss.
The sisters came back with two little boxes. Goldhair said: "Lady Baffy, we have been thinking. We know that you will have to go and be somewhere else one day. Maybe one day soon. It would be good to have you in Huntaworde all our days, but it won't happen. Sooner or later you will be travelling, to great distances and distant countries. So we asked our peddler friend what a traveller always needed to have with herself, and we bought you these,".and the sisters put in Buffy's hands a large square-cut stone and a wooden box. "These are a whetstone and a tinderbox," said Swerthair (they had got used to explaining everything to Buffy). "With these, you will be able to keep knives and weapons very sharp, and to light a fire whenever you need one. Mother has already given you a needle box. With these, and a horse, and your weapons… and your strength… you will never need to ask anyone for help."
Buffy's eyes shone. "We have our customs too, you two. When someone has done a good thing for us for no reason," she smiled and reached out to them, "we hug them, and we kiss them on the cheek, and we say thank you." And she suited her action to her words, as the sisters giggled.
When the village woke up after the peddlers had gone, people's eyes began to turn to the wheat fields. The harvest was close, and preparations had to be made to reap and store grain and hay for the winter, and for the King. Huntaworde was loyal to their King, and always sent tie King's Share of the harvest to the fortified granaries of Helm's Deep. This was not a fixed amount, but an agreed share, and now, while people repaired their harvest-carts, sharpened sickles and knives, cleaned the granaries, checked the village for mice (it would never do to have an infestation of mice just at harvest-time), the King's Eyes were expected, to assess the King's Share.
The Eyes came, sober men with tablets and few words. They inspected the valley from bottom to forest eaves, and were guests at Geirbold's overnight. When they left, he reported that they had seemed impressed with the amount and quality of the harvest this year; but then, they said, the kingdom is likely to need it. There was bad news coming from south and east.
After the King's Eyes, the local feudal Lord came in his turn. He came alone, without guards and attendants; that, Buffy was told, was his habit – and besides, his hall in the centre of the village was not really so large. Word came down from the village, and men and women came in from the fields and the farms to form a crowd and cheer him in. But when he came into sight, Buffy was disappointed. He was old, and pale, and his heavy clothing looked incongruous in the summer heat, as if he felt a cold nobody else could. And what was more, he was thin, and more than thin, something like withered, as if the life were seeping out of him. And still he sat up straight, a tall man on a tall horse, raising his hand hieratically to answer as the people of Huntaworde cheered and clapped. Geirbold, she found, was the Burghmaster, and he stood in the middle of the village square with an air, as the thin man slowly rode in and stopped. The crowd fell silent, and the Burghmaster turned to face them, pointed at the thin man, and proclaimed:
"The lord of Huntaworde and of the whole West-Treding, Grima Elventongue, son of Galmòd, Chief Counsellor to the King!"
And all the public exploded into cheers.
Buffy found that the Lord Grima's visit meant extra work. All the women were busy preparing for a banquet, while the men arranged benches and tables in the village square and all the neighouring streets,."The Lord's summer visit," went on Goldhair, "is when we consume all the stuff left over from the previous seasons. If the year has gone well, there is honey and sweet sap, and candied fruit, and flour and butter to make cakes, and savoury herbs, and preserved meat, and wine and ale. And we and the Lord Grima will welcome in the new harvest together." It sounded like a great party; Goldhair sounded even more enthusiastic than usual. And it was indeed a great party, with practically the whole village taking part. Buffy was less than enthusiastic, however. The bench where she was sitting was distant enough from the Lord's that she did not have to talk to him or make herself known to him, but her hearing kept taking fragments of conversation to her, from which it was clear that various people were telling the Lord Grima about her. As the day went on, Buffy actually began to feel uneasy about not being summoned. Enough people had told Grima about her that he should have been curious to meet her and speak with her. But he did not seem to be. She did not know what to make of his lack of interest, but it felt unnatural and wrong.
That night Buffy was out on the streets, on one of her night patrols. Everyone else was sleeping hard after the banquet, and she had even had to try and keep the duty wall guards awake. But as she was leaving them – she wished she had some coffee for them – she and they saw the door of the Lord Grima's hall open, and Sigebealdu step out. Buffy and the guards looked at each other, and Buffy was amazed to find, even without words, that this as no surprise to them. Maybe, she thought, they don't guess the whole meaning of this. But there was no possible doubt for her. Sigebealdu might not have seen her, but she was making little effort to pass unnoticed. And even from that distance, in the still of the night, Buffy could smell the smell of sex and male sperm from Farmer Geirbold's fiancée.
Buffy spent the rest of the night brooding over the image of the blossoming young woman – very curvy, very fresh-faced, the very image of careless youth – coming merrily out of the house of a man old enough to be her grandfather. She could not get the smell out of her nostrils. And when she saw the Lord leave Huntaworde for the day, on some errand of his own, the withered quality of his age struck her even more. It was none of her own business, she kept telling herself. But when, the next day, Geirbold and Sigebealdu announced that the wedding ceremony and party would be in two weeks and after the harvest, she could not bear it any more. She sought Brauna's advice.
"What can anyone do, Lady Baffy? The Lord Grima is our lord. He is owed respect."
"But does respect extend to….? You have two daughters, mistress!"
"And I am thankful every day, that they did not grow up like Sigebealdu. Don't think I haven't had that nightmare in my mind all my days as a mother. But I think I can hope that Swerthair and Goldhair will marry good lads who will be faithful to them, and will give us good, strong and upright grandchildren."
"Geirbold knows all about it, Lady Baffy," said Swerti, who had come in as Buffy and his wife were talking, "and he's all right with this." And then, to her stunned expression: "Sigebealdu is his second cousin, and the marriage is mainly a business arrangement to join family lands together and increase Geirbold's wealth and status. Not that he is against having a young and beautiful wife whom he's known all her life, but he does not expect much from her."
"Especially," said Buffy sarcastically, "as he's known her his whole life, right?"
"Right. He knows what to expect from her. You know, Brauna and I were happy when the girls turned out to hate Sigebealdu. It's not something we told them. They found her out by themselves."
"Even so… with all due respect, the Lord Grima…"
"It's all business, Lady Baffy. And the whole village knows about it. Geirbold has spent a fortune arming himself and his kinsmen as King's Horsemen. He is already Burghmaster, and he intends to buy the title of Huntaworde from the Lord Grima, who has plenty to spare, and who no longer has the time to look after the village. It was already something of a done deal, but Sigebealdu has put the seal on it."
Buffy shook her head.
"My lady, you have your strength and your power. Wherever you go, you will find your way. If you wanted to go to Edoras now, you could do it. But we are only normal farmers, and even Geirbold is just one of us, and has to live in the world he finds."
"So… you will go to the wedding? And take the girls?"
"We will, my lady. Not to go would be a public affront. And Geirbold is a friend, or at least not an enemy. We want to be at peace with him."
Two days later, Grima came back. Buffy could not believe the change in him. The Huntaworders did not seem to see it: they just gathered and cheered as usual, and he managed a pale smile and some listless compliments. And he still made a good showing, tall and straight on his tall horse, with his inscrutable expression. But Buffy could see the skin as pale and withered as parchment, and smell the dried but still clammy sweat on it.
That night Buffy came to him. He was lying in his soft woolen bed, awake and unable to rest, when he knew that the window was open – his was the only hall with glass in the windows – and that there was something in there with him. Before he could think of a way to react, she spoke.
"You've been to Hell. You have visited, or seen, something terrible. You may fool your villagers, my lord Grima; they want to think well of you, and at any rate they don't know much about this sort of thing. But I've seen people who've been where you have been. Where I come from… it is my job to deal with such things. To protect people from them." Buffy stopped for a few seconds, hoping the man would respond. But he said nothing.
"Are you sure you don't want my help? You came back with the face of a man who had just been scared nearly to death. It was not something you normally deal with. It was something way beyond your experience, and it could have killed you, my lord Grima."
The obstinate silence went on, so she started again. "But if it could kill you then, it can kill you now. That is why you are so terrified still. So you are in its power. Really, my lord, won't you take my help?" And she held out her hand.
Grima Wormtongue was tempted. He was terribly tempted. But if he revealed what had happened to him, he would also have to reveal his dealings with Saruman. And that could not…. He shrank instinctively from the notion. Besides, Saruman knew about her, and had made it clear enough that he had plans for her. What those plans were, Grima had not wanted to ask.
Buffy saw him hesitate, shiver, and then shrink away from her. She shrugged, and said: "As you wish. We have a saying at home, and it fits now, my lord… it's your funeral." Then there was some motion, and Grima saw he was alone.
Buffy saw him once more before he left the village. He was in the saddle, looking tall and inscrutable as always, standing still and looking down on his valley. All the fields were bright yellow in the sun, and even Buffy's unpracticed eye could tell that this year's grain harvest would be something above the average. He said nothing, shook his head slightly, and rode off. Two armed servants were waiting for him down the road.
She did not like that, but she had no time to follow him up in any way. Indeed, she hardly thought of him again. Today was the was the first day of harvest; the day when the whole population of the village, except for a few guards and odd persons, and herders who were then in their summer pastures in the hills, went out into the grain fields together, the climax of the whole year of work. Harvest time in the highlands of west Rohan was July. It was a communal task. Men, women and children worked together field by field, cutting and binding first the grain and then the hay, gathering them together in large rolls to be sent each to the granary of the owner of each field. The work began with the fields lowest and furthest away down the valley, where the grain was expected to have ripened fastest. This year, Buffy was doing most of the carrying, her small, lithe figure often barely to be seen beneath what seemed like a hay rick floating over the ground. Her help sped up the work somewhat; already by the evening of the first day, smoke was rising from the controlled burns of fully harvested fields, where roots, weeds and stubble were left to turn to ash and fertilize the earth.
It should have been a cheerful time, and indeed, for the first few days, it was. People sang as they worked, or flirted, or commented on the abundance of grain and hay. But then, just because the whole village was together as it rarely was during the year, rumours and news spread that much faster. And the rumours, that year, were bad and growing worse. Already the peddlers had reported
"Steornburg has fallen a second time."
Steornburg, it seemed, was the ancient capital of Stoningland – of Gondor – when great Mundburg was just a fortress. Long ago it was destroyed in the endless wars with the East, but in the days of our fathers it had been taken back and held as a fortress. Now the enemy has come out of Mordor and stormed it all the way to the River, they say. Gondor is at war, and no doubt we will have to go to war ourselves soon. But now we have to complete the harvest." And Buffy and all the men turned to the fields again.
But the war came before they expected, almost before the harvest was in. On the night of July 24, as Buffy lay in the straw, sleeping off another day of hard work, something incomprehensible happened. There was a sudden hideous shouting, and fiery light and – and something cut through her, and she was ripped from sleep, and was fighting back before she even realized what was happening.
As she recovered her senses, she realized that she had a wound in her side, where an ugly black spear had bitten; and that an Orc, one of the monsters she had seen months earlier in Isengard, was smashed like a huge bug against the wall, clearly sent there by her instinctive reaction, while another was still feebly struggling as her fingers dug into its neck. And then there was a terrible, terrified scream, in a voice she recognized, that tore the heart out of her breast: "AAAAAAAA! FATHER! LADY BAFFY! HELP, HELP, PLEASE HELP! AAAAAAAAAAAA…"
Buffy was already out of the barn, hitting a third monster like a freight train and killing it by the impact as she, in one motion, seized its heavy scimitar. But already it was too late. Goldhair's screams were dying down, as three monsters were piling on her and…
...eating her alive…
Buffy took only another instant to chop through the spine of one monster with the scimitar, rip the head off another, and smash the third against the ground till it was a formless, dead, bloody mass. But it was too late. Goldhair's eyes looked at her with something like hope, and she felt like howling. There was nothing anyone could do. Parts of her body and legs… were… gone...
But then Buffy realized that the hope in her friend's eyes was not for salvation. "Avenge me," the dying girl was saying. "Please avenge me." And Buffy understood. These people were really different from her own in Southern California. Without really understanding, she had sat around the fire in Goldhair's house in the evenings, or in the village square on idle or feasting days, and she had listened to tale after tale of heroic last stands, of betrayal and true faith, of enemies met and defeated at great price, the tales of Turin Turambar, of Helm Hammerhand, of Fruma and Frumgar, of Eorl and his horse Man-Killer. And in all the stories she had heard over the fire in the village evenings, vengeance – the vengeance for unjust killing or for shameful betrayal – was essential, valued and admired. She placed her right hand on her friend's death-wound, where blood was flowing without halt, and said the words that came to her. "I will," she said. "I swear it." And she went on: "I swear by your blood unjustly shed... by the friendship you gave me freely... by your goodness and beauty killed without reason... I swear that blood shall flow like rivers in revenge" (she could still feel Goldhair's blood flowing unchecked over her fingers, as Goldhair's heart tried desperately to keep beating.) "I swear that every monster who has shed your blood, and every monster who has been their accomplice, and every monster who ordered and commanded it, will die, and that they will know why they die. This I swear before all the powers, I, Buffy Anne Summers, the Lady Baffy, your friend. And I swear that I will not forget you as long as I live."
Goldhair was trying to snuggle up to Buffy, like a child to her mother. Then there was a little shudder, and something like a cough, and Buffy knew that she was holding a corpse.