Bastion

their own!” called a man in a farrier’s apron, halfway into the crowd. “Wait while I get my things! I’m going with you!”
    At this point the Headman and his son were standing completely alone. The son looked as if someone had hit him in the head with a brick and stunned him. The Headman was turning red and white in turns and seemed to have completely lost the ability to speak. His mouth kept opening and closing, but nothing came out.
    Jakyr started to turn Jermayan to ride away. Lena came out of the inn, burdened with the instruments and their gear. Amily turned toward the smithy, which must have been where they had been tending a patient. Lita and Bear headed for the stables. Then, as some of the assembled villagers turned to each other in alarm, and a couple of them actually started to wail, Jakyr turned back, as if to add an afterthought.
    “Of course,” he said, casually, “You all do have another choice. You can elect another Headman and toss these two in the gaol.” He shrugged. “It’s up to—”
    Before he could finish the sentence, the villagers rushed the guilty pair, and engulfed them.
    •   •   •
    Four days later, and a great deal of messy business behind them, Jakyr and Mags rode away from Therian as snow started to fall in good earnest. The former Headman and his son had already been sent off in manacles by cart to the Guardpost. It turned out, when their homes and account books were investigated, that they had been up to a great deal more than mere stupidity about appropriating the Waystation. They’d been skimming off the taxes by overcharging the villagers and keeping the overage for themselves. They’d also pressured villagers to sell them prime goods at bargain rates. They had been extorting the innkeeper; forcing him to let them and their “special friends” eat and drink free. They’d probably been up to even more mischief, but that was what had come out immediately. The “special friends” had been as quick to turn on them as the honest villagers had been.
    After that, a great deal of minor harm needed to be undone, and the decisions that the Headman had made that were good had to be ratified. He actually had not been bad at governing when he was honest, but it appeared that the moment he had a chance to make a profit off something, he did so.
    The other four had gone on ahead; it was likely that Mags and Jakyr would get there at almost the same time, since the Companions were faster than the vanners even when the vanners weren’t hauling the caravan, and both the Companions were eager to get back to The Bastion. They were using a ground-eating canter whenever they could, and Dallen was thinking fondly of the apples in storage and wondering if there was a way Jakyr could bake pocket pies.
    “That was a bad business back there,” Jakyr observed, glancing over at Mags as the two of them trotted side by side on a track that led through a tunnel of bare birches. “If that bully of a man had managed to get more people on his side, we’d have had to go through with the threat.”
    “Would we have?” Mags asked. “Done it, that is? Gone to the Guard, told them we were cutting them off?”
    “Of course we would,” Jakyr said, a little grimly. “It’s exactly what Bear quoted—the lifesaver’s dilemma. If we forced those people with the Guard, there would have been resentment, ill will, and covert, if not overt, rebellion. It would cost the Kingdom three times as much to take care of them as it does an ordinary village. Much more than they’re worth, to be blunt. We can’t help people who deserve it if we’re spending money and resources on people who claim they don’t want us. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve cut a village off from help, and it probably won’t be the last. Generally they come back begging to have us back within a couple of moons. Sometimes people just don’t realize what they have until it’s gone, and taking it away is the only way to teach them.” He laughed ruefully. “Though, of course, once we put the consequences in front of them, even the Headman was about to say he wanted us after all. I don’t know how he would have extracted himself from the hole he’d dug himself into, but it would have been amusing to watch.”
    “I’d’a paid good money to watch ’im squirm for a couple candlemarks,” Mags said thoughtfully. “’Pears to me, now that I think about it, these villages out here, they cost more to protect