Road to where?

He glanced at the angle of the afternoon sunlight through the leaves and realized their direction—north and east. They were moving toward Runnymede—and rebellion.

THE SUN WAS setting, and Geordie was striding out toward the forest with his bow in his hand when he heard a voice call his name. Turning, he saw old Will hurrying toward him as quickly as his bad leg would let him. As the man came up, Geordie said with a grin, "Good evening to you, Will."

"God's e'en to you too, squire," Will wheezed. "And where might you be bound on so fair an evening?"

Geordie's smile faded. 'To hunt, Will, as you know well."

"There's others will be hunting you, my lord." Old Will stared him straight in the eye.

Geordie's mouth tightened. "I'm not a lord, Will!"

"I'll use your true title when I tell you not to go into certain danger," the old man told him. "Poachers hang by the neck until dead, my lord. We'll manage somehow. The land and streams will yield us enough to get by."

But Geordie knew there were very few fish in the rivers this year, because of the previous year's drought. "I'll not see my people starve, Will!" He turned and strode away toward the forest.

Old Will looked after him, shaking his head and muttering. Then he turned and hobbled back to the village.

Old Sal looked up and saw him coming. "He wouldn't listen, would he?"

"Not a word," old Will said.

"He always was headstrong." Old Sal shook her head.

"Aye. You'll have to talk to his lady," Old Will advised.

It was the first really serious fight Geordie had ever had with his wife, and did not a hand's-breadth of good.

ROD DIDN'T FIND the men from Raven's village until night had fallen and the separate bands had settled down for supper and sleep. They were roasting a haunch of venison, and Rod wondered how much wildlife would be left in this wood after the mob had passed through.

One of the men looked up as Rod came by. "Hope you've something for the pot, if you plan to share in it."

"Happen I do be looking for a share." Rod swung his pack down, opened a flap, rummaged, and pulled out a dozen hardtack biscuits. "Bread to soak in the soup?"

Another man eyed the contribution. " 'Tain't no soup."

"I'll brew some, then." Rod pulled out his field kettle, dropped in all but one biscuit, and set it to catch the dripping from the roast. He broke the last biscuit, tossed one piece away, then dropped the other in with the rest. The villagers stared; one or two of them shuddered and tossed a morsel of his own into the night. They all knew one should always leave a token for the Little People, but had obviously been forgetting.

"Let the biscuits catch some of the drippings," Rod said, "and I'll add enough water to soften the bread. Though if you'd sooner I go …"

"How think you, Nicol?" the first man asked. "Send him packing?"

"Nay, Ruben," Nicol said. "Bread'll be welcome, even hard biscuit." He turned to Rod. "What's your village, gaffer?"

"Gaffer" was short for "grandfather;" Rod decided to take it as a title of honor. "Maxima be my town." Which was true enough, though it was technically also an asteroid.

Nicol frowned. "Never heard of no Maxima."

"It's small," Rod said, which was also very true. "What's your town?"

"Hardly a town," Ruben said sourly. "Maybe fifty families in Rookery."

Rod glanced at the fifty men gathered around a dozen campfires. "You've most of the fathers and brothers here, then."

"All over eighteen and under sixty," Ruben acknowledged. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Not no more, though?"

"More than ever, now," Nicol growled. "Mind you, we set out to demand of Sir Aethelred that he treat us like men instead of beasts—but we met up with the men from Loudin Village, on their way to talk to their knight, so we joined with them. Then we met the men from Tilbury, and from Schoon and Dobry, and the more we talked, the more we came to see our quarrel was with the baron, not none of his knights."

Rod wondered which of them had been the VETO agent. "So you all set out to demand better treatment from the baron. How many of you?"

Nicol shrugged. "A thousand at a guess. But the next day, our path joined with a road, and we found ourselves marching with another band the same size, and the more we talked, the more we came to see 'twasn't the baron we had argument with, but with his master, Earl Dommen—so we turned our steps toward the castle, and the farther we went, the more bands we met."

Rod had a vision of five thousand men marching through the greenwood. "Dommen County's a ways behind us."

Ruben eyed him suspiciously. "Haven't you a like tale to tell?"

"Hasn't every man here?" Rod countered.

"Aye," another man grumbled, "and the more we've talked, the more we've come to see 'tisn't the earl who's ground us down, nor the duke neither."

"Aye; 'tis all of them," Nicol growled. "There oughtn't to be no dukes nor earls, no, nor knights nor squires neither."

"Nay," said Ruben, "only free men living in their villages, and no castles to overawe them."

Rod nodded. "But where's the root, hey? The dukes and earls are all branches of the same tree—but where's the root?"

"You know full well," Nicol snapped. "'Tis in Runnymede. Begin by haling down the queen herself and her lap-dog king, and the tree's uprooted."

"Then we can go about pruning the branches," Ruben said.

But there would be men giving orders, Rod knew—the totalitarian agents who had stirred up this discontent in the first place, and if the peasants did succeed in overthrowing the lords, those agents would become the governing officials, each gaining more and more power, until, if the history of other totalitarian revolutions were any guide, the people would labor under masters even harsher, for they would guide their subjects' every step.

He had a vision of twenty thousand unruly peasants marching on Runnymede and the Crown—and stripping the countryside bare of every shock of grain and cow and piglet on the way.

"Who's this?"

Rod looked up to see a face he knew well, and shock held him immobile for a minute.

"Only a gaffer from another village, Mocker," said Nicol. "He brought biscuit." Then to Rod: "You get confused about where we're going or what we're about, you talk to the Mocker, and he'll set you straight."

Rod was sure he would. The Mocker had been the chief VETO agent when Rod had first come to Gramarye—one of the enemies Rod had overthrown to keep the land and its telepaths from being conquered and trained to become weapons for a totalitarian government. The idea of a dictator being able to know what secrets people hid in their own minds gave Rod as bad a chill now as it had then—but the Mocker didn't look a day older than when Rod had seen him last. For a moment, the unfairness of it bit his soul— that he should have aged so, but the Mocker not!

On the other hand, the Mocker had looked ancient when Rod had first known him.

The Mocker stooped, peering into Rod's face and frowning. "I know you."

"You've never looked on this face before," Rod told him.

The Mocker's eyes widened. "Yes I have, though there were no wrinkles on it then, and the hair above it was black!" He spun toward the villagers. " 'Tis the Lord Warlock come among you! Seize him! Bear him down! Let your tearing of the lords begin here!"