“Unless they want them to be noticed,” Burek said.

“Not this obvious, I don’t think. If the idea is to show that the city mints are adulterating their coins, they’d want them to look nearly the same.”

That evening, Arcolin wrote out a report for the Council, and Burek added notations to the map they were making. Next day, by daylight, he set Burek to making a fair copy of the map to send back to the city with his report. In midafternoon, a farm boy came to the camp to report that his father had seen “fancy men” moving along the woods’ edge.

“Fancy?” Devlin asked. He was questioning the boy; Arcolin listened from inside the tent where he worked.

“Hats w’ feathers,” the boy said. “And they leader has shiny things—around he neck and he arms.”

“How far away was your father, that he could see all that?”

“Oh, he hid in a log,” the boy said, scratching one bare leg with the dirty toes of the other. “He’s lookin’ for berries, this time summer, an’ he heard ’em, and into a log he went, same’s I would, on account it’s t’other village’s berry patch.”

“And?”

“And they come right by ’im, walkin’ proud, he says, but some limpin’ and blood on they clothes. And pickin’ every berry they saw.”

“How many?”

The boy stared at his hands, scowling, moving his fingers up and down, and finally said, “Two hands maybe.”

“They’ll be no trouble to us for a while,” Burek said. “But to the farmers …”

“It’s late to move today; we’ll move tomorrow,” Arcolin said. “I’m not going to risk our people on the trail at night. The woods are more open up that way—we should be able to pick up a trail.”

Cortes Vonja

Once a tenday the grange drilled outside the city, in the water meadows. As soon as the Marshal allowed, Stammel went along, his hand on Suli’s shoulder. He wore his own uniform again, though it was loose, and a banda over it. The Marshal insisted on a straw hat over his helmet; he was sure it looked ridiculous, but the Marshal wanted to protect his eyes.

“I’m blind,” Stammel said. “Why worry about them?”

“Because an infection in them could kill you,” the Marshal said. “And if there is any chance your sight might come back, staring into the sun you can’t see will finish it.”

So now he followed Suli and the others, stumbling only a little now and then. She was good at noticing what might trip him and murmuring warnings. “Rut here. Big root ahead, high step.”

This was drill as he knew it, but with slightly different commands. The yeomen knew them and started off at a strong walk; Stammel, next to Suli, felt out of place this close. At least he hadn’t tired on the walk out of the city, and when the Marshal called a rest, he wasn’t out of breath like some of those he heard huffing and puffing.