but seeing how you’re our kind of people, I’ll throw in a pinch of salt for free.”
“Thank you, goodwife,” Bryan answered for Meghan. The girl was at a loss for words on finding she had graduated from playacting a wife to being taken as a participant in a plural marriage without ever having received a proposal.
The woman went back to her pot and used the paddle to fill two wooden bowls with oatmeal. Giving the young couple a broad wink, she reached into a small clay container and added a pinch of salt to each serving. Bryan’s mouth began to water as he rooted through his pack for his eating spoon.
The oatmeal was tasty, but Meghan had eaten two eggs and an apple a few hours earlier, and her stomach began to protest after a half a serving. She looked up to see how Bryan was progressing and found that he was staring at her bowl in rapt attention.
“Here,” she said, sliding it across the table. “At the rate this is going, you’re going to be twice my size by the time we catch up with the players.”
“How much does a horse outweigh a person?” he asked playfully during a pause between heaping spoonfuls. “If I’m ever going to carry you, I have to bulk up.”
Meghan rose to question the woman about the location of their water well, and Bryan powered through the remains of her second breakfast. On finding that the well was on the opposite side of the hamlet from the communal outhouse, she asked for and was granted permission to fill their water skins. Bryan had polished off two more bowls by the time she returned. After paying the woman eight coppers for the oatmeal and receiving one back as a quantity discount, she purchased provisions for the road, and they left the hamlet.
Chapter 14
“So were all those people back in the settlement magicless?” Bryan asked as soon as they reached a discreet distance from the stockade.
“No. What makes you say that?”
“She said it’s a communal marriage, and I just assumed…”
“Oh. I guess I’ve heard it’s the way that people in some rural communities manage things, to keep one person from dominating a group. They all end up sharing what magic they have as equals. Nobody in the castles follows the old ways.”
“They’d fit right in where I came from,” Bryan commented. “Everything here is different than I would have expected, you know?”
“No, actually. What would you have expected?”
“Like, everybody living up to their ankles in manure, and guys riding through on horses and cutting people down with swords. A lot of crying and wailing, people with horrible diseases. You know, a lot darker.”
“Darker than Dark Earth? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, we have modern medicine and everybody goes to school, not to mention indoor plumbing. You guys are living in the Dark Ages, after all.”
“Not in your Dark Ages, we aren’t. Do you think we’re some crippled version of your world that’s stuck in the past because we don’t have your fancy toys?”
“But you already said that the barons are at war all the time and the whole place is ruled by some king who everybody hates. What happens when the soldiers steal the crops, burn down the houses and take the women?”
“Do soldiers do those things on Dark Earth? Here they fight each other. The barons buy food from the farmers to feed the armies and the soldiers wouldn’t fight otherwise. Who burns houses and takes women? If any soldier tried that, the other soldiers would kill him. There are rules about those things, just like there were rules in the kitchen.”
“But if they have the swords and the spears, who can stop them from doing what they want?”
“Why should they want to do those things? They’re soldiers, their job is fighting other soldiers. And if they tried, there are a lot more farmers than there are soldiers, and plenty of them have fighting experience from their own time in the army. Would you want to get in a fight with a farmer who’s sharpened
“Thank you, goodwife,” Bryan answered for Meghan. The girl was at a loss for words on finding she had graduated from playacting a wife to being taken as a participant in a plural marriage without ever having received a proposal.
The woman went back to her pot and used the paddle to fill two wooden bowls with oatmeal. Giving the young couple a broad wink, she reached into a small clay container and added a pinch of salt to each serving. Bryan’s mouth began to water as he rooted through his pack for his eating spoon.
The oatmeal was tasty, but Meghan had eaten two eggs and an apple a few hours earlier, and her stomach began to protest after a half a serving. She looked up to see how Bryan was progressing and found that he was staring at her bowl in rapt attention.
“Here,” she said, sliding it across the table. “At the rate this is going, you’re going to be twice my size by the time we catch up with the players.”
“How much does a horse outweigh a person?” he asked playfully during a pause between heaping spoonfuls. “If I’m ever going to carry you, I have to bulk up.”
Meghan rose to question the woman about the location of their water well, and Bryan powered through the remains of her second breakfast. On finding that the well was on the opposite side of the hamlet from the communal outhouse, she asked for and was granted permission to fill their water skins. Bryan had polished off two more bowls by the time she returned. After paying the woman eight coppers for the oatmeal and receiving one back as a quantity discount, she purchased provisions for the road, and they left the hamlet.
Chapter 14
“So were all those people back in the settlement magicless?” Bryan asked as soon as they reached a discreet distance from the stockade.
“No. What makes you say that?”
“She said it’s a communal marriage, and I just assumed…”
“Oh. I guess I’ve heard it’s the way that people in some rural communities manage things, to keep one person from dominating a group. They all end up sharing what magic they have as equals. Nobody in the castles follows the old ways.”
“They’d fit right in where I came from,” Bryan commented. “Everything here is different than I would have expected, you know?”
“No, actually. What would you have expected?”
“Like, everybody living up to their ankles in manure, and guys riding through on horses and cutting people down with swords. A lot of crying and wailing, people with horrible diseases. You know, a lot darker.”
“Darker than Dark Earth? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, we have modern medicine and everybody goes to school, not to mention indoor plumbing. You guys are living in the Dark Ages, after all.”
“Not in your Dark Ages, we aren’t. Do you think we’re some crippled version of your world that’s stuck in the past because we don’t have your fancy toys?”
“But you already said that the barons are at war all the time and the whole place is ruled by some king who everybody hates. What happens when the soldiers steal the crops, burn down the houses and take the women?”
“Do soldiers do those things on Dark Earth? Here they fight each other. The barons buy food from the farmers to feed the armies and the soldiers wouldn’t fight otherwise. Who burns houses and takes women? If any soldier tried that, the other soldiers would kill him. There are rules about those things, just like there were rules in the kitchen.”
“But if they have the swords and the spears, who can stop them from doing what they want?”
“Why should they want to do those things? They’re soldiers, their job is fighting other soldiers. And if they tried, there are a lot more farmers than there are soldiers, and plenty of them have fighting experience from their own time in the army. Would you want to get in a fight with a farmer who’s sharpened
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