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to think about reading the Widow Smack’s books even if she still wanted to lend them out, the orderly ways of the mathmatica fading in his mind.<br />
That grown Tim Ross might want no more than to fall into bed after meat and bread. He would begin to smoke a pipe and perhaps get a taste <strong>for</strong><br />
graf or beer. He would watch his mother’s smile grow pale; he would watch her eyes lose their sparkle.<br />
And <strong>for</strong> these things he would have Bern Kells to thank.<br />
Reaping was gone by; Huntress Moon grew pale, waxed again, and pulled her bow; the first gales of Wide Earth came howling in from the<br />
west. And just when it seemed he might not come after all, the Barony Covenanter blew into the village of Tree on one of those cold winds, astride<br />
his tall black horse and as thin as Tom Scrawny Death. His heavy black cloak flapped around him like a batwing. Beneath his wide hat (as black as<br />
his cloak), the pale lamp of his face turned ceaselessly from side to side, marking a new fence here, a cow or three added to a herd there. The<br />
villagers would grumble but pay, and if they couldn’t pay, their land would be taken in the name of Gilead. Perhaps even then, in those olden days,<br />
some were whispering it wasn’t fair, the taxes were too much, that Arthur Eld was long dead (if he had ever existed at all), and the Covenant had<br />
been paid a dozen times over, in blood as well as silver. Perhaps some of them were already waiting <strong>for</strong> a Good Man to appear, and make them<br />
strong enough to say No more, enough’s enough, the world has moved on.<br />
Perhaps, but not that year, and not <strong>for</strong> many and many-a to come.<br />
Late in the afternoon, while the swag-bellied clouds tumbled across the sky and the yellow cornstalks clattered in Nell’s garden-like teeth in a<br />
loose jaw, sai Covenanter nudged his tall black horse between gateposts Big Ross had set up himself (with Tim looking on and helping when<br />
asked). The horse paced slowly and solemnly up to the front steps. There it halted, nodding and blowing. Big Kells stood on the porch and still had<br />
to look up to see the visitor’s pallid face. Kells held his hat crushed to his breast. His thinning black hair (now showing the first streaks of gray, <strong>for</strong> he<br />
was nearing <strong>for</strong>ty and would soon be old) flew around his head. Behind him in the doorway stood Nell and Tim. She had an arm around her boy’s<br />
shoulders and was clutching him tightly, as if afraid (maybe ’twas a mother’s intuition) that the Covenant Man might steal him away.<br />
For a moment there was silence save <strong>for</strong> the flapping of the unwelcome visitor’s cloak, and the wind, which sang an eerie tune beneath the<br />
eaves. Then the Barony Covenanter bent <strong>for</strong>ward, regarding Kells with wide dark eyes that did not seem to blink. His lips, Tim saw, were as red as<br />
a woman’s when she paints them with fresh madder. From somewhere inside his cloak he produced not a book of slates but a roll of real<br />
parchment paper, and pulled it down so ’twas long. He studied it, made it short again, and replaced it in whatever inner pocket it had come from.<br />
Then he returned his gaze to Big Kells, who flinched and looked at his feet.<br />
“Kells, isn’t it?” He had a rough, husky voice that made Tim’s skin pucker into hard points of gooseflesh. He had seen the Covenant Man be<strong>for</strong>e,<br />
but only from a distance; his da’ had made shift to keep Tim away from the house when the barony’s tax-man came calling on his annual rounds.<br />
Now Tim understood why. He thought he would have bad dreams tonight.<br />
“Kells, aye.” His step-poppa’s voice was shakily cheerful. He managed to raise his eyes again. “Welcome, sai. Long days and pleasant—”<br />
“Yar, all that, all that,” the Covenant Man said with a dismissive wave of one hand. His dark eyes were now looking over Kells’s shoulder. “And . . .<br />
Ross, isn’t it? Now two instead of three, they tell me, Big Ross having fallen to un<strong>for</strong>tunate happenstance.” His voice was low, little more than a<br />
monotone. Like listening to a deaf man try to sing a lullabye, Tim thought.<br />
“Just so,” Big Kells said. He swallowed hard enough <strong>for</strong> Tim to hear the gulping sound, then began to babble. “He n me were in the <strong>for</strong>est, ye ken,<br />
in one of our little stakes off the Ironwood Path—we have four or five, all marked proper wi’ our names, so they are, and I haven’t changed em,<br />
because in my mind he’s still my partner and always will be—and we got separated a bit. Then I heard a hissin. You know that sound when <strong>you</strong> hear<br />
it, there’s no sound on earth like the hiss of a bitch dragon drawrin in breath be<strong>for</strong>e she—”<br />
“Hush,” the Covenant Man said. “When I want to hear a story, I like it to begin with ‘Once upon a bye.’”<br />
Kells began to say something else—perhaps only to cry pardon—and thought better of it. The Covenant Man leaned an arm on the horn of his<br />
saddle and stared at him. “I understand <strong>you</strong> sold <strong>you</strong>r house to Rupert Anderson, sai Kells.”<br />
“Yar, and he cozened me, but I—”<br />
The visitor overrode him. “The tax is nine knuckles of silver or one of rhodite, which I know <strong>you</strong> don’t have in these parts, but I’m bound to tell <strong>you</strong>,<br />
as it’s in the original Covenant. One knuck <strong>for</strong> the transaction, and eight <strong>for</strong> the house where <strong>you</strong> now sit <strong>you</strong>r ass at sundown and no doubt hide<br />
<strong>you</strong>r tallywhacker after moonrise.”<br />
“Nine?” Big Kells gasped. “Nine? That’s—”<br />
“It’s what?” the Covenant Man said in his rough, crooning voice. “Be careful how <strong>you</strong> answer, Bern Kells, son of Mathias, grandson of Limping<br />
Peter. Be ever so careful, because, although <strong>you</strong>r neck is thick, I believe it would stretch thin. Aye, so I do.”<br />
Big Kells turned pale . . . although not as pale as the Barony Covenanter. “It’s very fair. That’s all I meant to say. I’ll get it.”<br />
He went into the house and came back with a deerskin purse. It was Big Ross’s moneysack, the one over which Tim’s mother had been crying<br />
on a day early on in Full Earth. A day when life had seemed fairer, even though Big Ross was dead. Kells handed the sack to Nell and let her count<br />
the precious knuckles of silver into his cupped hands.<br />
All during <strong>this</strong>, the visitor sat silent on his tall black horse, but when Big Kells made to come down the steps and hand him the tax—almost all they<br />
had, even with Tim’s little bit of wages added into the common pot—the Covenant Man shook his head.<br />
“Keep <strong>you</strong>r place. I’d have the boy bring it to me, <strong>for</strong> he’s fair, and in his countenance I see his father’s face. Aye, I see it very well.”<br />
Tim took the double handful of knucks—so heavy!—from Big Kells, barely hearing the whisper in his ear: “Have a care and don’t drop em, ye<br />
gormless boy.”<br />
Tim walked down the porch steps like a boy in a dream. He held up his cupped hands, and be<strong>for</strong>e he knew what was happening, the Covenant<br />
Man had seized him by the wrists and hauled him up onto his horse. Tim saw that bow and pommel were decorated with a cascade of silver runes:<br />
moons and stars and comets and cups pouring cold fire. At the same time, he realized his double handful of knucks was gone. The Covenant Man<br />
had taken them, although Tim couldn’t remember exactly when it had happened.<br />
Nell screamed and ran <strong>for</strong>ward.<br />
“Catch her and hold her!” the Covenant Man thundered, so close by Tim’s ear that he was near deafened on that side.<br />
Kells grabbed his wife by the shoulders and jerked her roughly backwards. She tripped and tumbled to the porch boards, long skirts flying up<br />
around her ankles.<br />
“Mama!” Tim shouted. He tried to jump from the saddle, but the Covenant Man restrained him easily. He smelled of campfire meat and old cold<br />
sweat. “Sit easy, <strong>you</strong>ng Tim Ross, she’s not hurt a mite. See how spry she rises.” Then, to Nell—who had indeed regained her feet: “Be not fashed,<br />
sai, I’d only have a word with him. Would I harm a future taxpayer of the realm?”<br />
“If <strong>you</strong> harm him, I’ll kill <strong>you</strong>, <strong>you</strong> devil,” said she.<br />
Kells raised a fist to her. “Shut yer stupid mouth, woman!” Nell did not shrink from the fist. She had eyes only <strong>for</strong> Tim, sitting on the high black<br />
horse in front of the Covenant Man, whose arms were banded across her son’s chest.