Chapter 195: Bread

Vina opened her eyes at that.

"Not even for one sleep?" she asked from the grass.

"Not even for one," said Rishin. "Get up, little one. You have to eat first, and on this layer somebody has to hand it to you."

Martha had the pot on before anyone else was standing.

She had built a small fire on the riverbank with Winsmoke, and the smell of stew came across the grass with the smoke. She did not carry a single bowl to anybody.

She filled them and set them down on a flat stone, one after another, and then she stood back with her ladle and watched.

Alice picked up two bowls. She handed one to Logan and kept the other.

"Go on," she said.

He held his bowl to her mouth first, because she had handed it to him. She laughed and drank. Then she lifted hers to his lips, and the stew went down hot and stayed stew.

’It is the same pot as every waking,’ Logan thought. ’And it tastes as if it is the first meal I have ever had.’

All along the bank, the others were finding their way to it.

Daniel and Helen managed it with no trouble at all. They had been handing each other cups of tea across a kitchen table for longer than Logan had been alive, and they simply went on doing it.

Garen was less tidy. He fed Isolde a spoonful and then held the spoon in front of her until she ate a second one, and then a third.

"I can do it myself," said Isolde.

"You cannot," said Garen happily. "Not here. That is the whole point."

She took the spoon from him and fed him so fast that he choked.

Vina insisted on feeding the old man.

She stood in front of him with the bowl held up in both hands, and he sat against the tree trunk while she tipped it far too steeply. Stew ran into his beard.

"Slower," said Rishin.

"You said I had to eat first."

"I said somebody had to hand it to you." He wiped his beard with the back of his hand and held out his hand for the bowl. "Sit down."

She sat, and he fed her. He did it very carefully, one spoonful at a time, holding the bowl under her chin so that nothing spilled.

Billy had rolled up to watch.

"Disgusting," he said fondly. "All of you. I am glad I do not eat."

Oswin sat a little way off under the next tree with a bowl in his lap.

Martha had filled it, and nobody had needed to hand it to him.

He ate slowly with a spoon, the way a man eats who has been told he may, and every now and then he stopped and looked down at the stew as if it might change its mind.

He was not watching the others. He was looking at the river.

Logan saw Isolde notice. She had been laughing at Garen, and she stopped.

She watched the man eat alone for the length of three spoonfuls. Then she put her bowl down on the grass and stood up.

"Pebble," she said. "When you were at the door. Was there a circle?"

"Under the roots, ma’am. Beside the door. I saw it when we came out."

Isolde nodded. She walked over to Oswin’s tree and crouched down beside him.

"Do you have any Tower Points?" she asked.

Oswin looked up at her. "No, my lady. Not one."

"I have eight hundred." Isolde said it as if she were reading out a shopping list. "I earned them two sleeps ago off a thing made of the people from the stair. I have not decided what to do with them."

Behind her, Garen had put down his spoon. A slow grin was spreading across his face.

Oswin understood her before she had finished. He set the bowl aside.

"No," he said. "You have done enough. Your boy paid for my bread."

"Pebble paid for your bread." Isolde did not move. "That was his. This is mine."

"Why?"

Isolde looked at him. It was the face she had turned on Garen at the bottom of the stair, when she laced her fingers through his.

"You spent both of yours on her," she said. "I would have done the same for him."

She did not look at Garen when she said it. Garen looked at the river.

They crossed back over the shallows together, all of them, with the units splashing along behind.

The circle lay in the bank beside the black door, half hidden by the willow roots. It was the same as every circle Logan had seen since the rim.

It was a plain ring cut into the earth, and a faint blue glow came up from it when Isolde stepped up to it.

She put her palm on the ring.

[ Summon: Combat Unit x8 ] [ Cost: 800 Tower Points ] [ Remaining Tower Points: 0 ]

Eight columns of light rose out of the ground under the willows.

They settled one by one. A man with a short spear and a round cap came first, and then a boy with a torch. A shaggy brown mule with a pack frame on its back stood blinking at the willow branches.

A grey hound sat down in the grass and looked at Isolde with great interest. A thin woman with a reed bow stood beside it. A small white goat with a copper bell round its neck began at once to eat the willow leaves.

The last two were slower. One became a broad man in a long coat of scale with a curved blade at his hip. The other became a turtle the size of a cart, with a shell like river stones set in clay.

[ Pull result: 3x Normal | 3x Uncommon | 2x Rare ]

"No Epic," said Garen. "Unlucky, dear."

"Lucky enough," said Isolde. "There are eight of them."

She drew the eight cards out of the light and turned round.

Oswin was standing a little behind the others, on the edge of the bank. He had not come forward, and his hands were at his sides.

Isolde walked to him and held the cards out.

He did not take them at once. He looked at the eight units standing under the willows. The goat looked back at him with its mouth full.

"I do not know what I would do with eight," he said.

"You will not have eight," said Logan.

He had not quite meant to speak. Alice’s eyes came to his face, and he saw the question in them.

’Nobody outside this family knows what I can do,’ he thought. ’Not the dwarves, not Ansel, not anyone in Clasp. If I do this, a stranger will know.’

He looked at Oswin’s wrists, and at the sword on his back that had been too heavy for him to lift two sleeps ago.

’He has nobody to tell,’ he thought. ’And if he ever does, it will be somebody he loves.’

"Take them," he said to Oswin. "Then choose the one you want to keep. The others go into it. It stays itself."

Oswin took the cards.

The units stood up in the circle again beside their new owner, exactly as Wren and Hob’s pieces had stood beside Helen and Daniel. The change was as quiet as handing over a cup.

Rishin had been standing at the back with Vina. Now he spoke for the first time since the river.

"Name them first," he said. "Every one of them. Then he can do it."

Oswin looked at him blankly.

"They go into each other," said Rishin. "They ought to go in with names."

So they named them. Oswin could not think of a single name, and in the end nobody asked him to. Vina went to each unit in turn and looked it up and down, and then she told it who it was.

The spearman was Rook. The boy with the torch was Flick. The mule was Mule, because Vina said that some names were already right. The reed archer was Sedge, and the goat was Bell.

The man in scale was Thatch. The turtle was Stones.

Vina came to the hound last. It was still sitting in the grass, and it had not taken its eyes off Oswin since he picked up the cards.

"Bread," she said.

Oswin made a sound that was not quite a laugh.

"Because bread was the first good thing," said Vina. "And he is the second."

"That one," said Oswin. He answered at once. "The dog."

Logan told the eight what he had told the others before them. Thatch was the first to nod. Stones blinked slowly, which Logan decided to take as a yes.

He did the sum before he started.

’Three Normals, three Uncommons and two Rares. Bread is an Uncommon. Seven merges. One left over at the end to fold in.’

Each merge would cost him five hundred MP. He set his will on the mule first.

Flick went into Mule. The light rose and fell, and the mule came out of it an Uncommon, a size larger and with a lamp hanging from its pack frame.

Then Mule went into Bread, and the hound came out a Rare.

He did Sedge and Bell next, and the goat went into the archer. When the light faded, Sedge stood a head taller with the goat’s bell knotted at the tip of her bow.

Sedge went into Bread. The hound rose from it an Epic.

Thatch and Stones went together last of the pairs. The turtle went into the swordsman, and Thatch came out an Epic with a round shield of river-stone scale on his arm.

Then Thatch went into Bread, and Rook went in after him.

[ Merge Complete ] [ Greyhunt Hound (Uncommon) + Pack Mule (Normal) + Torch Bearer (Normal) + Reedmarsh Archer (Uncommon) + Copperbell Goat (Uncommon) + Scaleguard Duelist (Rare) + Riverplate Turtle (Rare) + Spear Guardian (Normal) ] [ Ironcoat Mastiff (Legendary) Created. ]

The light faded, and a dog stood in the grass under the willows.

It was as tall as Vina. Its coat was still grey, but it had thickened into a mail of overlapping grey scales from its shoulders to its haunches. A copper bell hung at its throat on a band of leather.

Its paws were broad and heavy, and its eyes were the warm brown of the hound’s. They had not left Oswin.

It walked to him across the grass and pushed its head up under his hand.

Oswin stood there with his fingers in the scales of its neck. He did not seem able to move.

Logan opened the panel for him.

[ Ironcoat Mastiff ] [ Rank: Legendary ] [ Lifespan: 2,920 days ] [ Lifespan may be exchanged for Abyss Points at any Relic Shop. ]

"Eight years," said Oswin. He read it twice. "Eight years."

"It is not yours to spend on us," said Isolde. "Do you understand? It is for the next time you are lying under a tree."

Oswin looked at her over the dog’s head.

"I understand," he said. "Thank you, my lady."

Isolde nodded once. Then she turned and walked straight back to Garen, and she put her hand in his without a word.

Vina crouched down in front of the great grey dog.

"Bread," she said sternly. "You have to look after him. He forgets to eat."

Bread looked at her. Then he licked her face from her chin to her forehead.

Vina fell over backward in the grass. She lay there laughing with her braids full of willow leaves, and the dog stood over her with his bell ringing.

Rishin watched them. Then he turned his face downstream.

"Now," he said. "We go."

Oswin picked up his sword from where he had laid it on the bank. He slung it on his back, and this time Logan saw that he did not have to brace his feet to do it.

The dog fell in at his heel. They went down the river together.