The horses came over the rise at midmorning, and Aldric saw the two villages of the southern Greenway for the first time at the same hour.
They were small. They had been small for a long time. The northern of the two — Greycote, on the maps the surveyor had drawn last autumn — sat in a fold of land below a hill that had once carried a watchtower and now carried the foundation-stones of one and nothing above them. The southern village had no name on any map. Aldric had been told it was called Brydon's Holm by the people who lived in it, and the people who lived in it answered to about ninety souls between the two settlements, and three Bree merchants had been asking, for two months, who exactly was responsible for the safety of the cart-road that ran between the villages and bent westward toward the Bree-line.
Three Bree merchants and counting. There had been a fourth letter that morning.
The party reined in at the top of the rise. Aldric was riding the same dun he had ridden to the Coldfells two months ago, the patient one with the slightly shorter left foreleg that gave it the rolling gait Aldric had stopped noticing about a year in. Tauriel was beside him on the grey mare she preferred for road-work. Halbarad was not with them — Halbarad had been left at the keep, with the cold not quite out of him from the winter — and in his place rode Captain Eorlund, who had been picked for the ride because he was good at standing where he was told to stand and not putting his hand on his sword without being asked to.
There were six others. Two Rangers from the south patrol, one steward with the writing-case strapped to his pommel, and three soldiers in the everyday kit, no banners. Aldric had been clear at the keep: no banners, no horns, no formation. They were coming as visitors who had been asked to come, and they would come at the speed of visitors.
"Greycote first," he said.
"Greycote first," Tauriel agreed.
She had said it the way she said most things she meant to do — as if it were a fact she was reading rather than a course she was setting. She had been quiet on the ride. He had not pressed her. He had learned, in the months since the hall ceremony, that her quiet was not a thing that wanted to be moved off.
They went down to the village.
Elder Cathan met them at the village stone.
He was a man of perhaps sixty, broad through the shoulders, with hands the size of a small loaf each and a thumb missing on the left one. He did not bow. He inclined his head a measured amount and stayed planted where he was, which Aldric registered as the courtesy of a man who would not pretend deference he did not yet feel.
"My lord."
"Elder Cathan."
"You came in person."
"You sent the petition in person."
"My grandson sent the petition. I sent the grandson."
"Then I came to the grandfather."
A small allowance of expression crossed Cathan's face — not a smile, but an acknowledgment that the right answer had been given.
"Sit," he said. "We have set table."
The table was set in the village hall, which was a long timber-roofed room with the door open at both ends and the smell of fresh rushes on the floor. Six elders from Greycote and four from Brydon's Holm sat along the benches. They had set bread and salt and a cold pot of something Aldric did not, for politeness, examine too closely. There was beer in pitchers. There was no wine; the villages did not run to wine.
Aldric sat at the head of the table where they had set the place for him. Tauriel sat at the other head, where they had set the second place by careful protocol — not at his side, but opposite him, with the length of the elders between them. The elders had set it that way without being told. They had been watching the road for a long time, and they had seen, somewhere along the way, that Northwatch sent its envoys in pairs and that the second envoy was not a wife.
Cathan put his hands on the table.
"We will speak the matter."
"Speak it."
"We have been on this road eighty years," Cathan said. "Eighty years since the holdings of the north broke up. Eighty years no lord, no levy, no tax. Once a generation a man comes from somewhere and tells us we have a lord and we should not be surprised when soldiers come for our sons. We have, twice, hidden our boys in the root cellar of this hall while soldiers stood in the road outside it. Once they went away. Once they did not."
He folded his hands together. The thumbless one rested over the whole one.
"We are not asking for soldiers, my lord."
"I know."
"We are asking for a writ that says the soldiers do not come."
"I understand."
"With respect — you do not yet. You sit there and you say I understand and a year from now your steward sits in this same hall and tells us that the levy has been redefined to include road-watchers and we owe four boys to the road-watch."
"I understand the fear of that, Cathan. I do not promise it will not happen. I promise it will not happen on my hand. The next hand — I cannot speak for the next hand."
"Then we are not signing with the next hand. We are signing with this one. And we want the writ to bind the next one."
Aldric considered.
He looked across the table at Tauriel.
She had been listening with her chin slightly lowered, the way she listened in council. She did not, when his eyes found her, give him any signal. She held the moment. Then she set both her hands flat on the table — palms down, a gesture he had seen her use exactly twice before, and both times she had been about to speak in a way that decided a matter.
"Elder Cathan."
"Lady."
"You have asked for a writ. May I describe a writ to you, and you will tell me if it is the writ you are asking for."
"Describe it, Lady."
She described it.
She did not speak for long. She did not draft in flourishes. She set out a writ in five terms — the first that Greycote and Brydon's Holm should be entered into the realm of Northwatch as a single civilian compact under the customary name of the southern Greenway holding; the second that no levy of men should be drawn from the compact for the first generation, defined as twenty-five years from the date of the writ, save by the free vote of the compact's own elders; the third that taxation should be set at the level of the lowest of the existing nine regions and reviewed at five-year intervals by the compact's own representative on the council; the fourth that the safe-passage of the Bree road should be a service rendered by Northwatch in exchange for the writ, with no portion of the cost passed back to the compact for fifteen years; the fifth that any future hand attempting to revise the writ should require the compact's consent expressed by two-thirds of the elders sitting in this hall.
She did not look at Aldric when she spoke the second term, and she did not look at him when she spoke the fifth.
She did not need to.
Cathan listened with his hands folded over each other.
When she was done, he sat for a long beat without speaking.
Then he said: "That is the writ we are asking for."
"Then if my lord agrees to those terms," Tauriel said, "we may sign today, or we may sign at Northwatch under the seal of the council, as is your preference."
"Northwatch," Cathan said. "Under the seal. So that it is on the same paper as the writs of the other nine."
"That is wise."
Aldric had not spoken. He let the silence sit a beat longer to make plain to the elders that the negotiation had been hers and the assent was his.
Then he said: "I agree to those terms."
The Brydon's Holm elders murmured between themselves. One of them — a small woman of perhaps seventy with a long single braid down her back and a knife at her belt that had been resharpened so many times the blade was three-fingers narrower than the bone of the handle — leaned forward and looked Aldric directly in the face.
"My lord. One question."
"Speak."
"Your Lady, who is not a Lady of Men. Will she stand as witness on our writ?"
"She has named the writ."
"That is not the same as standing as witness. We will be content with either, but we will know which we have."
Aldric looked at Tauriel.
Tauriel inclined her head — not at him, at the small woman.
"I will stand as witness on your writ."
"Good," the small woman said, and sat back, and folded her hands together in her lap, and said no more.
The meal continued.
[NORTHWATCH — COUNCIL CHAMBER, THE WEEK FOLLOWING]
The seal went on the writ at the hour after sext.
The council was the smaller council, not the full hall — six members, the clerk, Tauriel at her place to Aldric's right, Cathan and three elders of the compact at the table opposite. The writ had been drafted twice in the intervening days, once by the council clerk and once by Cathan's grandson who had a clean hand and an eye for terms. The two drafts had been compared. They had differed in two places. In both, the council clerk had ceded to the grandson's wording, which was Aldric's instruction. They are signing into our record. Let their record show in our hand.
He picked up the pen.
He wrote his name at the foot of the page. Beside his name the clerk wrote the small Latin tag of the council's seal — cum consilio — and Tauriel, when the pen passed to her, signed her own name in her own hand, in the long flowing characters of her own people's letter-form, and she added beneath it, in the Common, the words as witness to the terms.
Cathan signed for the compact.
The seal went on.
The writ went into the record.
When it was done, Aldric leaned forward and spoke to the clerk in a voice that carried across the chamber.
"Add the marginal note. Terms negotiated by the Lady Tauriel of the Greenwood, who stands witness in her own right."
The clerk wrote it.
Cathan looked across the table at Aldric, and then at Tauriel, and then at Aldric again. He did not speak. He inclined his head a measured amount — the same measured amount he had given at the village stone — and the small acknowledgment in his face was, this time, larger by some unmeasurable degree.
He gathered up his copy of the writ.
He rose.
"My lord. Lady. We will hold to the writ. We will expect the writ to be held to. We will see you in five years for the first review."
"In five years, Elder."
He went out, his three elders behind him.
The chamber settled.
Halbarad — who had attended this council, because the council clerk had said he would attend and he had been not quite willing to be told otherwise even with the cold still in him — set his cup down with deliberation on the table.
"Ten regions."
"Ten regions."
"That is a number that will be noticed."
"I know."
"Bree will hear of it by the next caravan."
"They will."
Halbarad looked at Tauriel.
He did not say anything. He inclined his head — a small, careful version of the village stone's inclination — and Tauriel returned it.
Aldric folded his copy of the writ and put it under his hand on the table.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we open the survey of the Bree road. Engineer's party, the southern Rangers, and a clerk. I want the road formally measured before the first Bree caravan rolls through under our writ."
"My lord."
"And, Halbarad."
"My lord."
"Send word to Captain Eorlund. The southern Greenway patrol begins next month. Six men. Captain to be named by Eorlund's own selection."
"My lord."
The clerk took down the orders.
Outside the chamber window, in the courtyard, a wagon was being loaded with the survey kit for the morning. Aldric watched it for a moment.
The Bree road was coming back to him in pieces. Each piece was bound by a writ. Each writ was bound by a name beside his own.
He turned from the window.
"Bring me the second writ."
The clerk brought him the second writ.
It was already in his hand when the messenger came in.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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