Regar turned on him, glowering. “Don’t you play the judicar with me, thief. I don’t want your help.”

“And yet someday you may need it,” Arvid said. “There’s trouble coming—everyone knows that—and if yeomen cannot stand together, things will be worse.”

“That was my speech,” the Marshal said. “And you are not a Marshal, Arvid. Yet, and most likely never. Be silent and listen. I have a proposition for you both.” He looked from face to face and then went on. “There’s an old way of breaking in a young ox or dray horse, you know. Hitch it together with an older trained one and give the pair a load to pull. I can’t have the two of you dividing the grange’s loyalties. So if you want to remain here, either of you, you’re going to work together. And it starts tonight.” He turned and took the relic out of its niche.

Arvid shot a glance at Regar, whose glance was equally brief and alarmed.

“You will be hitched—under an oath sworn on this relic—as if by a rope to work side by side at your trades—”

“How can we do that?” Regar said. “I have a commission to build—”

“One day the two of you will work at your trade, Regar, and then the next at Arvid’s. He is not a mason, and you are not a merchant: you will each serve the other as assistant. You will eat together from the same dish and sleep together—”

“No!” they both said.

“—in the same room,” the Marshal went on, unperturbed. “I expect you both snore and neither wants to admit it. You will do this for the next tenday, and after that we will see.”

“What about my wife?” Regar asked. “My children?”

“You can stay at the soldiers’ camp with Arvid, or your wife can put up with the two of you. Take your pick. On the night before your day’s work, the one whose work it is will choose where to sleep. Since tomorrow will be Arvid’s day and you will assist him, he will decide where you sleep this night.”

Regar glared, but Marshal Porfur simply looked at him. Regar’s shoulders finally slumped. Arvid bowed slightly to the Marshal.

“As you command, Marshal,” he said.

“I have to tell my wife,” Regar said.

“Go with him, Arvid,” the Marshal said. And as they turned away, “And don’t make me actually shackle you together—if any sees you more than an armslength apart, I surely will.”

In silence they left the grange and in silence headed for the main street of Ifoss, trailed at a little distance by the soldiers who had come with Arvid to drill night. He assumed they’d listened at the door.

“I suppose you’re happy about this,” Regar said. “Seein’ as old Porfur thinks I’m worse than you.”