After Macurdy's second ambush, the soldiers had turned back. They traveled slowly, partly because of their wounded, and partly because some were riding two on a horse. Wollerda jumped them at a draw south of the first ambush site. Numerous soldiers were killed there, and most who fled were caught. Prisoners were disarmed, and their horses and boots taken. They trudged south barefoot, carrying the news.

It took two more days for all of Macurdy's survivors to straggle in, some of them wounded. All but eleven of the original fifty-two made it, and Tarlok was unscratched. The flatland teenagers weren't among them.

Meanwhile a messenger arrived from Jeremid. He hadn't been pursued, and was on his way with grain, twenty-three head of cattle, and several flatlander volunteers. He expected to bring more recruits from Three Forks. The only fighting had been brief, at the bailiff's stronghold; none of Jeremid's men had been killed, and only three wounded.

Macurdy sent a detail south with pack horses to strip the dead armsmen of byrnies and weapons.

Rebel morale was out the roof. Even their worrywart commander was feeling pretty good.

27: Of Truth and Lies

One of the nicest things Macurdy returned to was Melody. She didn't try to take him to bed, just ate breakfast and supper with him, teasing him hardly at all. She seemed reconciled to his marriage vow, though why she remained interested, he didn't understand. Meanwhile she had a women's tent set up to accommodate the tax girls and their guardian, as well as herself and Loro, the ex-captive from the Orthal days.

Three days after Jeremid returned, Macurdy sent him with a full company to hit the reeve's stronghold. The guesstimate was that fewer than twenty of the reeve's company would have returned from their pursuit of Macurdy and his raiders. His fort would be thinly defended, unless he'd been reinforced. Not the usual stockade, its walls were stone, twenty feet high.

Jeremid had known what to use for opening the gate; he just hadn't expected to find one so handy. Scarcely two hundred yards from the fort was an inn, its taproom catering to armsmen. A new stable was being built for it, and there, waiting to be raised, was the forty-foot roofbeam. Now he wouldn't have to tear down someone's roof to get his battering ram.

It took him less than half an hour to have an A-frame made from other timber at the site, meanwhile sending a platoon around behind the fort with bows and scaling ladders. These then threatened an attack on the rear, holding defenders there, while construction laborers and stable horses, protected by byrnie-clad Kullvordi shieldmen, dragged first the A-frame, then the ram to the fortress gate.

It took a bit to set things up, and despite the shieldmen there were casualties, but within half an hour the gate had given way. The fort's defenders-fifteen escapees from Wollerda's massacre, plus a dozen household guards-surrendered promptly.

Jeremid didn't send all his men inside. Four galloped off toward Gormin Town, two miles east, to the tent camp outside its partially burned palisade wall. Less than an hour later, a mob was forming outside the fort, shouting that they wanted the reeve turned over to them.

Meanwhile Jeremid's men had commandeered the thirty horses in the reeve's stable, and across their backs put rope slings. Then they loaded most of them with tax grain brought in from the bailiwicks-two heavy sacks of wheat, and two of the much lighter oats per horse. A few, instead of being loaded with grain, would carry all the weapons his men could find.

At that they could load only a relatively small portion of the grain stored there. Then a long line of grinning townsmen was let inside, and the rest of the grain began disappearing out the gates on their shoulders.

The reeve and his chief deputy were turned over to a local "committee of justice." The A-frame was already being converted to a gallows, and briefly the committee discussed whether to "merely" hang them there, or to flog them and then hang them. Meanwhile Jeremid had a newly named "rebel X" slashed in the forehead of each captured soldier, with the warning that any of them recaptured in Gurtho's service would definitely be executed. His advice was to leave the country till the rebellion was over, to avoid being forced back into service.

Jeremid had arrived none too soon, a captive told them. A count's platoon was expected the next day, with a wagon train to haul the tax grain to Teklapori.

After the raid on the bailiffs' strongholds, Kithro had begun operating a rational supply system for the rebel force, assessing the hillsmen a lighter equivalent of the royal tax, which he pointed out was no longer being collected, a tax which would be used to secure and support their own freedom.

Meanwhile, problems of logistics and space had worsened. The camp was well-located for security, but with the growth of Macurdy's Company, it had too little pasture for its horses and cattle. And with more and more recruits, supplying them over rough trails by packhorse was becoming impossible. So they moved to a much more accessible area, taking over public pasture accessible by wagons from the North Fork Road.

There crews were detailed daily to build longhouses: cutting, dragging, and fitting logs, splitting out roof planks and shakes, and building mud and stick fireplaces. The hillsmen were handy and cheerful at almost every sort of work, and morale remained strong. Partly because they were busy, partly because they could see so much progress, and partly because they had no doubt that with Macurdy's leadership, this rebellion was going to succeed.

Gurtho, and not "the flatlanders," had become the focus. Macurdy continually made a point of their common cause, Gurtho being hated by both. As for what they might do when Gurtho had been thrown down, time would tell.

Meanwhile, Gurtho had embarked on a campaign to gain the affection of the Teklan commons, throwing a large and costly party in every town and major village to celebrate the eleventh anniversary of his coronation. It might have worked to a degree, if people hadn't had to sit through a speech, ill written and mostly ill read, on the virtues of King Gurtho and the dangers of the Kullvordi. If the virtues of Gurtho had been left out, it might have worked to a degree. As it was, both peasants and townsfolk failed to cheer it. What they cheered were the whole roast oxen, the bushels of roasted early corn, and the barrels of beer. Local musicians were paid to play, and people danced till they dropped from beer or exhaustion, or found a partner to have sex with in the shadows.

And of course, none of the counts, reeves, or bailiffs told Gurtho that the speech had failed, for Gurtho himself had written it, and he was highly sensitive to criticism. He'd had Idri read it in advance, for her opinion, and had she been honest with him, it might have been repaired. But she'd praised it. For Sarkia's ambassadrix sent two couriers a week to the Cloister, and received two. And the Dynast had quietly changed her position regarding the existing king of Tekalos.

Eight-Month was well underway, and the rebel ranks grew daily. One day after lunch, Macurdy, Kithro, Melody and Jesker began to go over the table of organization together. Wollerda had a raid in mind, a lot bigger than anything they'd done before, that required cooperation from Macurdy's Force. As yet, though, Macurdy had no units larger than companies-108 officers and men each, following the Ozian system. All in all he had 736 officers and men, as of the day before, but in his opinion, fewer than half had had enough training to be sent into battle, with many of those being only marginally ready.