Page 12 of Into the West

The next day, Kordas held an actual Court. He set himself up in a seat at the prow of his family barge, using a piece of stump discreetly covered with a fancy blanket, and told the Dolls to let it be known that in light of last night’s speech, he would hear the petitions of anyone who had changed their mind about going “home.” He was making a formal exercise of it this time; until now, anyone could leave without asking for permission. All they had to do was show up at the Gate, which was locked to the one in Valdemar near the barge-maker.

And he’d intended to have that Gate dismantled this morning, but after yesterday, he was going to give people who had gotten a sudden case of cold feet a final chance to leave. But this time, he was going to exercise his authority as Baron and make them ask him for it. And there was something more, something that as Baron, he needed to do. And for that, he needed Dolls and his Guard. As he prepared his improvised “seat of state” in the wan autumnal sunshine and ate still-warm bread and a handful of nuts and small, wild apples, he explained to Rose what he was going to do.

“We can arrange that, Baron,” she said, with that uncanny calm the Dolls never lost. “I will make sure it is done.”

As he expected, before he’d finished eating his breakfast, there was a queue of people waiting, arriving one at a time to line up politely just off the path that ringed the lake. Not as many as he had feared. And no one that he knew personally, which would have been very awkward indeed. He relaxed a little bit. This was a good time to hold his “court,” since most people were still getting their food at the communal kitchens, and there wouldn’t be a lot of gawkers around.

He took his seat, glad for the heavy knit tunic that was over his linen shirt. It wasn’t Court garb by any means; in fact, it wasn’t much of a step above what everyone else was wearing. Virtually all of the “good” clothing he had was packed up in one of the storage barges, and by look he couldn’t have been told from one of his servants. But that “commoner’s clothing” was all to the good on two counts—first, it was doing an excellent job of keeping the chill breeze at bay, and second, it brought home to everyone that he lived no better here than any of them, and he was prepared to share their hardships. Indeed, he already was.

“Well,” he said, as leaves drifted down from the trees and the breeze carried the bitter scents of the ones already fallen toward him. “Let’s begin.” He heard the first petitioner, who stammered out his request to leave, blaming his wife’s supposedly sudden “bad feelings” about the expedition. Kordas listened gravely, then nodded. “You can leave, of course. I’ve not stopped anyone from leaving before, and I don’t intend to now. However, everything that is not part of your personal household belongings will be staying with us. This especially includes food.”

The man—and everyone else in line—gaped at him.

“You know quite well that there were crops still in the fields back home that are awaiting harvest,” Kordas continued blandly. “You aren’t going to starve, and you’re going to find plenty of seed-stock waiting for you. But we might starve, and we will need every grain of wheat and turnip where we are going. I certainly won’t demand the tools of your trade, but if there are duplicates, we’ll be having them, too. And firewood. And if you have uncut fabric, we’ll be having that as well. You can take just enough of your herds, if you have any, to start again, but no surplus. I’ll give you each a voucher for three barges from the makers, which you can sell to compensate for what we’re taking. They can use those vouchers to pay their Ducal taxes. There will be a Doll and a Guard waiting for you back at your boats to assist you in separating your personal belongings from the food and other things that we are going to need. You will be more than compensated for the losses by the barges you have and the three new ones. And, as of today, all food will be held in the common store.”

He had put on that face that said to anyone looking at him that “there will be no argument here.”

He was quite good at reading body language, and he could tell that while the folks waiting to be given permission to go did not like this proclamation in the least, they were not going to argue about it. He’d explained exactly what he meant to Rose earlier.

“I’m not talking about that rare bottle of wine someone is saving for a special occasion, nor about someone’s private hoard of sweets. I am talking about enough food to supply a family over the winter, and seed-stock for planting in the spring, and if it seems to you that they have more of anything than they are likely to need, you’ll take it. After all, my family paid for every one of the barges here, and I am letting them keep all the ones they need to hold the things we’re not taking. Plus three more when they get back. Especially we need food that will keep well or is otherwise preserved. That will go into the stocks for the common kitchens, so everyone who stays will benefit.”

He was well aware that while people were supposed to be getting all their meals from the common kitchens, there were some who were cooking for themselves. Not many, because it was hard to cook on those tiny barge stoves, but enough that he knew not everyone had turned over the food they had brought with them to the common store. And he hadn’t demanded that before. Now he was. There might be trouble from some of the nobles, merchants, and people of relative wealth, he was sure, but . . . they had the option to leave if they didn’t like it, and they would still lose the food.

Food was not one of the things that his father and grandfather had thought much about when they made the Plan, probably because they expected that when the escapees took the Gate to other parts, they’d be staying where they’d found themselves, and that they were not going to find any other humans around. According to the original Plan, his father, grandfather, and he had all assumed they’d be Gating straight into wilderlands. Once there, the Plan assumed they would have one short growing season to get in gardens, and thanks to the preparations the Duke’s family had made, they would all have plenty of grain and other long-term stores to see them through to spring.

Well, there was plenty of grain and other long-term stores, but they were not going to settle in for a long, mostly sedentary winter. They were going to be on the move. Now, in one way, that was good; forage for the animals wasn’t going to run low. But in every other way, it was a problem; moving people needed more food than sedentary people, and people working out in the cold rather than huddled up in their barges would too.

Hence, the sudden edict.

It didn’t go over well, but he hadn’t expected it to. There were long faces, and a little grumbling, and some sour looks cast his way, but no one tried to argue with him.

And they all still wanted to leave anyway.

When the last of the petitioners had gone, he remained where he was, knowing that as the Doll-and-Guard pairs spread out among the barges and began making inspections for foodstuffs, he was going to get some blow-back from the nobles and wealthy.

And he did.

In fact, within a mark, they had organized themselves into a group, chosen a leader, and confronted him, still seated on his stump, as a united front.

He listened impassively while the leader made his argument, which basically consisted of “we aren’t peasants and we don’t intend to live like peasants,” though it was couched in better language than that. All this went on in blithe indifference to the growing crowd of those “peasants” who were watching and listening, possibly expecting him to take their side. And when the leader—the middle-aged Lord Portrain—was finished, Kordas allowed silence to fill the space. Of course everyone within earshot had been paying very close attention to what was said, and there were a lot of people within earshot.

And most of them were . . .“peasants.” Belatedly, the assembled group began to realize that they had an audience for their grievances besides Kordas, and that audience was looking stormy.

Finally Kordas spoke.

“Lord Portrain. What have I done with my horses?” he asked .

“Uh—” The man had pulled himself up and puffed up his chest, prepared to refute whatever Kordas said next. But he hadn’t expected this, and he promptly deflated, caught off guard by the unexpected question.

“What have I done with my horses?” he repeated. “I’ll tell you. I’ve put them out for common use in pulling everyone’s barges, from the Tow-Beasts to my Golds. All of them except for my riding horse, my wife’s, and my ward’s. Two of those will be pulling our barges; the third isn’t even a yearling yet, and is not up to work. All of our food is in the common store. Every bit of it. I didn’t even keep sweets for my children. All of the manor’s crops are in the common store. We are not concealing cakes and hams under the floorboards. I am not telling any of you to do anything I haven’t already done for the common good of us all.”

He let that linger for a moment. “Now, the Gate is still open. You can leave. Like the others that left today, your foodstuffs will stay, but you can leave. No one will take as much as a speck of gilding from you, just food and the common things that common people will be needing. I won’t even demand that you turn your personal weapons over to the Guard, though the gods know we need them. I won’t force you to leave your servants with us. But either way, stay or go, your food stays with us.”

Lord Portrain opened his mouth, and closed it again.

“Now, I want you to understand, I am not only doing this for the common good, I am doing it for your protection.” Portrain blinked at that, and some of the others actually looked startled, and started to glance around at the people who were listening to this conversation. The startlement turned to vague alarm at the sour looks being directed their way. “I am going to spin you a tale. It’s not a wild tale. It’s not an unlikely tale. It is, in fact, something that could all too easily come to pass.”

He turned his gaze on all of them, catching and holding their eyes, before moving on to the next, letting his jaw set and his expression harden. “Imagine, if you will, that ice has stopped us from moving, and because of the terrain, we can’t haul the barges out of the water and put them on runners to use as sleds. We are stuck where we are, like it or not, until spring. We are not running out of food—quite—but rations are short, tempers are flaring, stomachs are emptier than is comfortable—and then someone gets a whiff of frying sausages or spiced cider. They get their friends. They track the smell down. It’s coming from your boat. Now, when everyone else is eating boiled wheat and a scrap of meat or fish at every meal, what do you think that hungry, unhappy mob of people is going to do to you when they discover how well you’ve been eating while the rest are doing without?”