Sianim 01 - Masques

The exterior of the tent was sewn with a double wall so it could be stuffed with dry grass that would serve as insulation in the winter. A simple, ingenious flap system would make it possible to keep a fire inside the tent.
    Those who could not sew, or who were too slow to grab the needles Myr had also procured, were put to work building what Myr termed “the first priority of any good camp”—the lavatories.
    The risk of disease was very real in any winter camp, and any military man knew stories of regiments destroyed by plagues because of the lack of adequate waste facilities. Myr’s grandfather had been a fanatic on the subject. Myr, thought Aralorn with private amusement, was more like his grandfather than some people in the camp could appreciate.
    Aralorn, needleless and worried that Myr would notice, searched futilely for Wolf and noticed Edom looking frustrated as he was trying to stop the tears of a little girl in a ragged purple dress.
    “I want Mummy. She always knows how to fix it so her hat doesn’t come off.” Clutched in the child’s grubby hand was an equally grubby doll.
    “Astrid, you know that your mum isn’t here and can’t help you,” said Edom impatiently. This was the child who’d been rescued by a stranger in Wolf’s caves. Aralorn looked at her with interest. How had a girl as young as Astrid made it to the camp safely without kin? Maybe someone had brought her—she’d ask Wolf. In the meantime, she couldn’t leave Edom so obviously over his head.
    “Hello, Astrid,” Aralorn said, and got a suspicious look in return.
    After a wary second, the girl said, “Hullo.”
    “Boys don’t know how to dress dolls,” said Aralorn, squatting down until she was at eye level.
    Astrid looked at her distrustfully for a minute before slowly holding out doll and hat.
    Years of being the oldest daughter of fourteen gave Aralorn the experience to twist the hat on at just the right angle so that it slipped firmly over the doll’s wooden head and caught on the notch that had been carved to hold it in place. Astrid took the doll in one hand and smeared her tear-wet cheeks with the other.
    “Can you see if you can get all of you young ones over here?” asked Aralorn. Astrid nodded and ran off.
    Turning to Edom, Aralorn said, “I take it that you are supposed to be keeping an eye on the children?”
    Edom rolled his eyes. “Always.”
    “I can relieve you for a while if you like.”
    He nodded and took off with a grin before she could take it back. She wondered if he’d be as pleased when Myr cornered him for latrine duty.
    She had the children sit in a semicircle around her. Some of them did it with a sort of hopelessness that broke her heart. Astrid was the youngest by several years. Most of them were ten or eleven, with a few older and a few more younger. There were more girls than boys. Wary eyes, eager eyes, restless eyes, children were a much more difficult audience than adults because no one had yet had a chance to teach them that it was better to be polite than honest.
    Before she began, she looked at their faces to help her select a story. At breakfast, Stanis had told her that most of them hadn’t been there much over a month. None of them had any family at the camp, and judging by Astrid’s tears, they were all feeling lost.
    She sat cross-legged and looked at them. “Do you have a favorite story? I won’t claim to know every story anywhere, but I know most of the common ones.”
    “ ‘Kern’s Bog’?” suggested one girl. “Kern’s Bog” was a romantic story about a boy and his frog.
    “ ‘The Smith,’ ” said Tobin in a rusty little voice. Everyone looked at him, so Aralorn guessed that it wasn’t just in her company that he was mute. “My pa, he told me it. Right before I had to leave.”
    It wasn’t a gentle story, or, really, a children’s story. But, she supposed, sometimes a story isn’t about entertaining.
    “All right,” she agreed. “But you will have to help me if I get parts wrong or forget things. Can you do that?”
    She waited until they agreed.
    “Very well,” she said, sitting back and settling into the proper frame of mind. “Once upon a time, when the old gods walked the earth and interested themselves with the affairs of men, there lived a smith in a small village. The smith was skilled, and his name was known far and wide. Although he was a gentle man, he lived in a time of war and so spent most of his day shoeing the great