A week later Colonel Shin stood in front of his soldiers gathered in the training arena. There was another duty ahead of them, not as deadly as Moorland to be sure, but fearsome in its own way.
“Men,” he announced loudly, as if he needed to draw their attention even though they were already watching him intently.
Captain Thorne had told them there was yet another difficult task, and that had all of the soldiers wondering. Since the Guarders had been wiped out several moons ago, the world had been silent . . . except for the trouble caused by many teenagers who seemingly had nothing else to do since they had no Guarders to steal for anymore. So for some reason roving bands of boys had found it entertaining to scatter livestock and spend their nights removing wheels off of wagons. Fortunately the same boys were also stupid, and left those wagon wheels on the front doorsteps of girls they liked so it was relatively easy for Mahrree, Peto, and Jaytsy to suggest to Perrin who was at fault based on who they had heard was trying to impress someone else. As a result, Perrin now had a list of teenage boys who needed some rehabilitation.
That’s where the soldiers came in.
“As you know,” he said as he slowly paced in front of them, “we still have a problem with the youth of Edge. We also have a problem with the fact that many Edgers passed away this year because of the pox. And we have an additional issue that many of them planted gardens and crops intended to fill our storehouses, which gardens and crops are now not being tended to.”
Perrin noticed his soldiers squirming, worried that he was about to recruit them to be farmers.
“Soldiers, not only does Edge have this situation, but the entire world. The Administrator of Security has embraced this plan of every village in the world raising extra to store against difficult years.”
He didn’t go on to tell them that the document so thoroughly created by Lieutenant Offra explaining the idea and sent to Giyak, on Perrin’s recommendation, was accepted by Idumea but not acknowledged. Instead, the initiative for storehouses came solely from Giyak’s office.
When Perrin broke the news to Offra, who was likely hoping for a promotion for his work—as if anyone would be allowed in Fort Shin to be promoted to the same level of Thorne—the modest lieutenant merely nodded that it was all right.
But Perrin had told him a few weeks ago, “It’s more than all right, Jon. What we’ve established here is an excellent idea. But now that Idumea has its hands on it, they’ll mess it up somehow—mark my words. And when they do, the blame will go straight back to Giyak and the Administrators, not to us here at Edge.”
Offra had smiled at that, and he was smiling again now at the back of the training arena because he knew what was coming next.
“So men, while Idumea has recently sent me a decree that we are to demand that the citizens help with the care of the extra plantings—”
Actually, Idumea was demanding forced labor—at point of sword, if necessary—to take care of the crops.
Perrin’s gaze fell upon Lieutenant Offra again who, for once, wasn’t trying to look shorter than he was. He was beaming back at Perrin because when he read the report from Idumea, he recognized the wisdom of his commander.
“Sir!” he had exclaimed, “you’re right! Can you imagine if we had taken all the credit for the idea? Right now we’d be having to take all the blame, too, for people being forced to weed and harvest. But sir, how did you know?”
“Seriously, Jon? You thought the government would do this right? Tell me the last thing they did really right.”
When Offra didn’t have a ready answer, Perrin pointed at him. “Remember this moment when you first realized that the government can’t properly take care of people. In fact, that’s never been their responsibility. They’re supposed to keep our borders safe so that we can live as we wish. It’s our responsibility—yours and mine and Zenos’s and everyone else’s—to take care of each other.”
To that, Offra fired off the snappiest salute Perrin had ever seen.
He looked like he was about to do it again, too, as Perrin continued his speech to the soldiers.
“Men, I don’t want you forcing the good and law-abiding citizens of Edge into taking care of their neighbor’s storehouse crops. Instead, Offra and I have developed one plan to solve all problems: we have a number of teenage boys with too much time on their hands. Starting this afternoon we’re taking those boys and we will let them do a bit of weeding and harvesting and working for the village.”
Perrin hadn’t expected his soldiers to laugh and cheer, and he watched Offra as the reticent soldier guffawed at the enthusiastic response. Lieutenant Radan was also smiling, but as Perrin’s gaze traveled to the side of the room to Captain Thorne, he was scowling.
When Perrin told him of the plan yesterday, the captain was completely astonished.
“But . . . but this is not an approved method of using the soldiers, sir!” It was rare nowadays that Thorne countered Perrin, too eager to try to stay on his good side. But every now and then the books he had so dutifully memorized burbled out of him.
“Aren’t we supposed to be keeping the village secure?” Perrin had reminded him.
“Well, yes, sir, but—”
“And don’t the teenagers of Edge pose a security threat?”
“Well, naturally, but—”
“And isn’t filling our storehouses another security concern?”
“Well, there’s a case to be made that—”
“And how many more ‘wells’ do you plan to dig, Captain?”
That threw Thorne completely off course, allowing Perrin to walk away from him before the captain could protest.
When the soldiers quieted their cheering, Perrin continued. “Men, Offra has a chart prepared and posted, and there you will see what supervising duties you have over the next couple of weeks. You will go out in force accompanying our bored little boys, surrounding them in the fields, and making sure they do their duty for once. Captain Thorne will lead the first group today, and thirty of you will assist him. I promise that all of you will have an opportunity to sun yourselves as you guard our laborers. Dismissed!”
---
Mahrree normally wasn’t one for sneaking around, but so curious to see if Perrin could really get some of her students to work, she made an exception. About the time she knew Captain Thorne would be leading out a group of twenty of Edge’s youth to a large garden on the west side, Mahrree slipped out of her house and followed from a safe distance.
She noticed that the soldiers seemed to enjoy their task of keeping the boys paired up and marching in parade behind Thorne, but Mahrree could hear the annoyance of the captain when he ordered the boys to get down on their knees among the plants.
Mahrree slipped behind a large bush next to the now-empty house to which the garden was attached and settled in for the show.
As the soldiers formed a perimeter around the field where the teenagers reluctantly placed themselves, Thorne began pacing and shooting menacing glares while a sergeant explained which green things were vegetables and which green things were weeds that needed extracting.
With rapt fascination Mahrree watched as the boys reluctantly began to pull out weeds and toss them any which way. A few times some began to complain loudly, until Thorne marched over and shouted in their ears that it was this or incarceration. Mahrree didn’t think his strong-armed approach was entirely what her husband was expecting when he wanted the boys “rehabilitated.”
There’s discipline, Mahrree knew, and then there’s abuse. The first works while the second never does. And some people, like Lemuel Thorne, had no idea there was even a difference.
Mahrree began to notice something. She was too far away to see clearly, but it was obvious to her that the boys were sending some kind of silent messages, probably a system they worked out when they were still employed by the Guarders.
Mahrree bit her lip in anticipation, sure that the boys were thick in planning with their subtle gestures. But Thorne was too bu
sy practicing an elongated stride that looked as if he was avoiding stepping into manure to notice.
Mahrree wondered how she could send Thorne a warning, but then—
One boy coughed.
At that, each young man yanked tomatoes off the vines they were weeding and pelted the soldiers with red, orange, and green projectiles. Mahrree knew she shouldn’t laugh, but she couldn’t help it once she realized the main target was Captain Thorne. She covered her mouth and collapsed in a fit of shaking behind the shrub.
But it wasn’t as if anyone would have heard her; the soldiers exclaimed so loudly nothing else could be heard, except for the gleeful laughter of the boys as they fled in every direction. Two rushed so closely past Mahrree that they nearly tripped over her boots which stuck out a bit.
By the time Mahrree composed herself enough to peer out from behind the bush not a single teenager remained. Behind her, the sound of a horse trotting to the scene caused her to cower even further behind the bush, especially when she heard the booming voice.
“Captain! Exactly what just happened here?”
“Colonel Shin!” Thorne panted, shocked, angry, and now a bit panicked as an orange smudge dribbled down his face. “Sir, they surprised us! It was an ambush! Look at us!”
Mahrree kept her hand firmly over her mouth as she heard, “Oh, I see you all right. All of you. Please, do tell me,” Perrin said in his most condescending tone, “what mortal threat is there associated with lobbed tomatoes? What terror of vegetables is there that would cause each of these men to NOT pursue their responsibilities?”
Thorne’s mouth worked up and down lamely, searching for a response. The soldiers looked at each other sheepishly, realizing not one of them had chased the teenagers.
Mahrree could barely contain her snorting.
“We . . . we . . .” Thorne stammered, “Look at our uniforms! They all need to be cleaned now!”
Perrin rolled his eyes. “Oh, they’re vegetables, Captain! And you not only let the work force escape but you also allowed them to destroy a few bushelfuls that someday we may desperately need. Now, there should not be a single one of you standing here, but you should all be RUNNING IN PURSUIT!”
No one can stay standing when Colonel Shin used that tone and volume. Captain Thorne actually jumped as he took off in a mad dash in a direction he hoped some teenager had run. Even Mahrree felt the need to hop up and help, but she stayed as small as she could behind the shrub as the soldiers sprinted away.
Perrin sat alone on his horse quietly grumbling at the empty garden until he said, “You can come out now. Mahrree?”
Stunned, Mahrree slipped out from behind the shrub. “How did you know I was there?”
“I can feel you in the air,” he waved vaguely. “Well? How did your students do?”
“Quite well,” she said with perfect sobriety. “One hit Thorne squarely in the face with a tomato. Excellent aim.”
They both glanced around to make sure no one was around, then they snorted in laughter.
“We’re terrible!” Mahrree exclaimed as she wiped away a tear. “We shouldn’t be laughing.”
“He deserved it, I’m sure!” Perrin said. “If I were an artist, tonight I would draw his expression complete with the tomato sliding into his ear.”
“Oh, stop it!” she chuckled, although mentally she pictured the drawing of the pathetic captain hanging in a prominent spot in Perrin’s office at home where he could admire it. “Don’t you need to be finding some lost boys?”
He shrugged. “I know where they hide in the marshes—down the slope a ways from the canal—so I’ll just swing by there in an hour with a fresh pack of soldiers who aren’t afraid of tomatoes. In the meantime, do you want a ride back home?”
Mahrree eyed his horse for the day, a white stallion who was clearly suffering from the heat. “I don’t think that poor animal deserves any more weight. He’s already . . . foamy.”
Perrin sighed. “Frothing. Yes. The sergeant in charge of the stables thought he’d be a good match for me, but he looks stronger than he is. Maybe it’s the weather.”
“Maybe you should be giving him a ride back to the fort. I’m fine walking.”
“You realize you’ve never ridden with me?”
“There’s a reason for that!” she declared. “Why would I want to get up on an animal like that? Well, that one doesn’t look too dangerous. More like a melting snow bank right now. But in general, why?” She looked up at him flirtatiously as she headed for home.
He swung his horse around to accompany her. “Oh, come on. Every female dreams of being rescued by a dashing officer on horseback. Doesn’t she?”
“And what would you be rescuing me from? And on that?”
“Someday, though, you’ll want to ride with me.”
“That will be a very unusual day, I promise!”
“All right then. Guess I getter go round up some ridiculous young men and see if they found our lost boys yet.”
He’d tipped his cap formally to her and kicked his heels into the weary animal. Mahrree grinned as she watched him growing smaller in the distance, eventually sighing to herself in delight.
---
A week later she thought about him again, riding off on that dissolving horse, and sighed in pleasure.
Then again, it was so easy to get lost in an afternoon daydream when she had a pile of papers to grade. School had started again, and it was clear that her students were as distracted in their writing as she was in her grading it.
But, tragically, there were fewer students this year. Three boys had died due to the pox, along with their families.
Indeed, the final tally of dead was staggering. Over ten percent of the population throughout the world—just like in Edge—and twenty percent in some villages, had succumbed. And every fort needed to recruit more men to fill the ranks of those who died.
Perrin confided to Mahrree last night that he wasn’t entirely sure why, though. “There’s still no evidence of a Guarder presence. We can at least shrink the size of the army safely, and that would also reduce taxes and put more silver back into the world’s pockets. That would be the humane thing to do right now.”
“But Perrin,” Mahrree said, “since when are the Administrators interested in returning anything back to the world?”
He grunted. “Of course. Why relinquish so great a hold? Remember when they first put commanders in ultimate control over the villages? It was supposed to be a temporary measure.”
“Well,” Mahrree began philosophically, “that was about fourteen years ago now, and since the world has been in existence for 336 years, I suppose fourteen years is relatively temporary—”
He squinted at her. “With that kind of reasoning, you could be an Administrator, you know that?”
Her mouth dropped open in feigned horror. “I think that’s the most awful thing you’ve ever said to me!”
Mahrree chuckled again at that conversation and looked down at the penmanship that appeared more like weevil trails on the page.
“Ugh,” she pulled a face. “Even with an extra long Weeding Season break I still can’t bring myself to correct this! Not as if any of those boys did their share of the work.”
Well, a couple finally had. Instead of Captain Thorne leading out the workers, it was Shem and Lieutenant Offra who, while they both maintained a firm hand with the boys, also knew enough to make the weeding into a competition. Rehabilitation didn’t have to mean drudgery, after all. Another week or so, the farms would all be taken care of and the boys would have paid off their debt to society.
And, not coincidentally, most of the trouble makers had been working so hard during the days that they were simply too tired at night to make any more trouble.
She stared again at the scrawled pages before her trying to rehabilitate the fragmented sentences, and was struck by a thought.
“Wait a minute—everything’s back to normal!” she marveled out loud. “When did that h
appen?”
Yes, everything was blessedly, boringly normal for the first time in a year and a half.
“I don’t believe it!” she laughed.
The kitchen door slammed shut. “Don’t believe what?” Perrin called as he came into the eating room and looked down at her work. “Someone wrote a good paper? Well, obviously not that one, Or . . . no, no that one, either. Did a muddy worm crawl across that paper, or is that supposed to be someone’s handwriting?”
Mahrree chuckled. “I was just realizing that everything has gone back to normal, and I simply couldn’t believe it.”
“It’s almost normal,” he said with a familiar glint in his eye. He took off his cap and bent down to kiss her—
But a sudden knocking at the front door stopped their kiss.
Perrin groaned, kissed her quickly anyway, and headed to the front door. When he opened it he faced the chief of enforcement.
Mahrree still wondered how the young man, barely thirty, earned that appointment. Physically, he wasn’t anything intimidating. While of average height, his body was on the floppy, rather jiggly side. Nor did he come across as anything confident, as the vigorous massaging of his felt hat demonstrated. It likely wouldn’t fit properly by the time he left. And he wasn’t exceptionally bright, either. While not one of her past students, Mahrree knew him in school and was struck by the fact that he always seemed to be about two steps behind everyone else, in comprehension, in awareness, even in walking. However, he performed better than average on the Administrators’ tests, and somehow getting the right numbers counteracted the logic that he wasn’t up to the job.
He did know, nevertheless, how to find the colonel so there were points in his favor.
“Colonel, sorry to interrupt you at home, but I saw that you were returning, so that perhaps this would be a—”
“Come on in, Barnie,” Perrin said patiently.
Mahrree hid her smirk. The poor man dithered even more than Beneff had. And he seemed to be the worst around Colonel Shin.
Chief Barnie waved awkwardly over at Mahrree as he came in to the gathering room.
“Colonel, I need some advice,” he said as he sat down on the edge of the sofa. He slapped his hands together worriedly, crushing his hat. “The magistrate said he couldn’t find anything in the record books, I have nothing in our law guides, and I thought maybe there was some kind of army precedent—”
“For what, Chief?” Perrin asked good-naturedly. He was used to the younger man dancing around his main point until he felt confident enough to stomp on it. During their first conversation—which took five minutes to get the point, after different sidetracks about the weather, the latest entertainment, and the issue of whether beef was tastier than veal—Perrin had learned to cut off the chief as quickly as possible. Direct questions usually forced the poor man to his point sooner.
“The farms, Colonel!”
The other problem with Barnie was that when he felt the penetrating stare of the colonel he often got to his point too quickly, leaving Perrin trying to figure out what conversational ground he had leaped over in his hurry.
Mahrree looked down at her papers to keep from chuckling.
“The farms, as in . . . ?” Perrin tried to backtrack him a little.
“People taking them over!”
“Who’s taking them over?”
“Those working them, of course!”
From the corner of her eye Mahrree observed her husband rubbing his chin as he always did when he was looking for patience stored in his square jaw line. And to his credit, he always found some. “Let’s narrow this down even more, son—”
Oh, it was really bad when Perrin had to revert to calling Barnie “son” in that tone of voice.
“—so you went to someone’s house, right?”
Barnie nodded eagerly.
“Who’s house?”
“The Planatards. On the east side? That was when—”
Perrin held up his hand. “The Planatards all passed away?”
“I know!” Barnie nearly shouted.
Perrin held his hand a tad closer to Barnie’s mouth. The chief stared at it and pressed his lips closed. “So someone was working on their farm?”
“The Meesemen. Had their two daughters weeding the berries, but that’s not all.”
Perrin put down his hand and nodded to the chief to continue.
“They moved in!”
“The Meesemens into the Planatards’ house?”
“Yes! Said it was bigger than their house!”
Perrin brow furrowed. “Did you talk to them about this?”
“Of course! Said it’s not right, them taking over the house and the field, but they said they were working it, so why not—”
Perrin held up his hand again, but the chief wasn’t looking at him as he gestured wildly with his hat in hand.
“—So I said, but it’s not yours, and they said no one owns it now, so it’s ours, and I said that they already had a farm, but they said not as big as this one, so I said who will have your old farm, and they said they’d have both! Well then I said, what if they have relatives that want to come claim the farm, and they said, well maybe their entire family died, and why would they want a farm in Edge anyway, and they wanted it so they just took it! Just like that! I mean, Colonel, what do we do now? It’s not exactly theft, but it’s not exactly honest. Is it?”
“No, Barnie,” Perrin patted him on the back. “It’s not. Let me mull over the problem and I’ll have a solution in the morning.”
After the chief left, Mahrree said, “I didn’t have a chance to tell you yet, but when I went to the market this afternoon I noticed the family that usually runs the bakery was also manning the basket stand nearby.”
Perrin rubbed his forehead. “Shem told me there were reports of goats and hens disappearing from the back garden of someone’s house. Those reporting the loss were ones that were about to claim those animals themselves.”
Mahrree sighed. “On my way home I saw a young couple carrying furniture out of a house whose residents died.”
Perrin groaned. “Is everyone claiming the dead’s possessions?”
“Apparently. I guess the thieving of the boys is as contagious as the pox. Maybe people think it doesn’t matter if the immediately families aren’t around to complain.”
“This is getting out of hand,” he fumed. “Yes, there are animals and goods available, but it shouldn’t be for the swiftest hands! Where do people get the idea that they can just take something?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Magistrate Wibble has been eager to do something in public ever since the memorial service in Planting Season. He wants to lead? Then he’s going to lead this village!”
“Lead them the way you think they should be lead?” Mahrree guessed.
“Well, of course. Tomorrow night no entertainments but a mandatory meeting. This ‘reallocation of goods’ ends now!”
Chapter 22 ~ “You aren’t people, you’re vultures!”