Ask For An Inch, Get A Mile

It was the next day, and Stubby was busy mashing up his stew into more of a paste so that he could eat all of it, because his face was sewn up so tightly he could barely open his jaw.

"It'll take a week or so to heal," Harry reminded him, needlessly, as a starving Stubby desperately spooned mash off his chin and into his mouth.

Stubby glared angrily at the dwarf. Stubby did not have any of the height issues of either Tryggvi or the dwarf. He was just about average height for a Mar, with his hair cut in the Gien fashion and his clothes bought second-hand from a Gien salesperson. The clothes were badly in need of repair.

"Magic," he said, when the bowl was essentially scraped clean. "You didn't have to sew me up, you could've used magic."

Harry slapped him casually with a long spoon designed to stir deep pots of soup.

"Did you not listen to anything I said while I operated on you?"

"I was passed out."

Harry had to concede that point, certainly. Anyone who could stay awake through it assuredly would be angry right now.

"First," he said, holding up a hand with a stub instead of a ring finger, "Dwarves don't do magic." He ticked back another finger. "Second, your Mar magic can't remove the infestation that had covered your face. Doing it with magic would have cut you up the same way. Third, you're alive now right? Who gives a damn how it worked?"

"I don't think you said any of that while you were operating on me," Stubby said, astutely.

Harry slapped him again, for being correct. "It doesn't matter. Do you remember when Tryggvi came to visit you?"

"No."

"All right, let's start from there. That's where we should be starting anyway." Harry sat up a little straighter and tapped the spoon lightly on Stubby's shoulder.

"I wish you'd never come to me," he said, with feeling.

Harry had not slept the previous night. Tryggvi's casual dismissal of Harry's hard work in saving this boy's life had upset him to no end. Worse, this was the first time Harry fully disagreed with Tryggvi's decisions. The man was a brilliant strategist, a capable tactician, smart and quick on his feet, metaphorically. He didn't waste lives of people whose lives weren't worth wasting. What made this boy's life worth wasting?

Well, Harry had to admit, Stubby wore clothing and hair that looked far more Gien than Mar. In Tryggvi's view, that was a capital offense. Until yesterday, Harry would've stood by the leader on that one, too.

So now Harry had spent the night awake, trying to figure out how this not-so-bright lad could be led into finding a sacrifice for the damnens among the people he had just defected from to rejoin his original side. The pretenses were amazing, really. Because technically, he was a traitor to the side he wanted to redeem himself to now.

Then again, Harry thought, he didn't betray us, the resistance. He betrayed them, the Mar culture. Justification? Bah! Harry shook his head.

"What?" Stubby said, interrupting Harry's mental processes.

"I'm working on it," Harry said.

"Working on what?"

So ... well, the loophole seriously was that when Tryggvi said "Gien," anyone dressed like a Gien would do. What we really need, Harry thought, is a guy and someone to cut his hair properly.

"Recruits," he said out loud, causing Stubby to jump.

"Huh?"

"Stubby, Tryggvi said you can't just come barging in here and insist on joining us, especially with your past. You need ..."

"What about my past? What do you mean?"

"You used to work for them."

"Them?"

"The Giens."

"Naw, we worked for you guys," Stubby said, and frowned. "We never did get paid."

Harry took a deep breath. "You need to prove to us that you are worth being a member of our cadre."

"What's a cadre?"

"Our band."

"I want to join your band."

"Good! We want you to as well. But what you need to do is go back to the town where we last met, and bring back a recruit for our cause."

"I need a recruit?"

Dear Diah, this man can walk? "Yes. Do you understand we're asking you to prove that we can trust you?"

"Yeah."

"What are we asking you to do?"

"Go to the town, and bring back a recruit."

"Right. Well, off you go then." And with no further procrastination, the boy loped off into the forest.

At least, Harry thought, he has a good sense of direction. And he put the matter out of his mind. If the boy was smart, he would never return. If he was earnest, he would perform the task. But he was stupid, and would probably return alone and bitter, and then he'd have to die. And Harry could do nothing at that point.

Harry could see a dozen ways that could blow up in his face, but it was all he had right now. If Tryggvi knew this was how he was handling it, Tryggvi would blow a fuse. Maybe, thought Harry a little childishly, if Tryggvi had wanted it done properly, he would've done it himself.

So the dwarf got back to the business of constructing buildings, which in his book was far more interesting than constructing people. In a metaphorical sense, of course. The technical aspect of making babies was quite fine with him. A bemused smile lit up his face the rest of the day, and he was briefly heard to chortle when someone asked him about joiners and nails.

The next day was much like the previous one, and Harry, busy exploring the world of drainage, blissfully did not think about Stubby for the entire day.

The dwarf had just settled down to a bowl of thick rabbit and rice stew with the misfigured and cranky Cork, who, luckily, wasn't particularly verbose, when the bleating rose from the edge of camp. It was the signal Harry had chosen to warn if a group of more than 20 but less than 40 was sighted near them.

Everyone moved with precision, and Harry could not have been more proud. Tryggvi appeared and disappeared, like a damnen himself. They were better at fighting than building, Harry mused. Maybe when we need to move, for whatever reason, the camp will come down faster than it went up.

The dwarf finished his stew, though. He wasn't here to fight. He was here to make sure everyone knew what to do when there was a fight. Besides, now he had more food. He grinned as he reached for Cork's half-full bowl sitting next to him.

"Harry!"

The dwarf's head snapped to attention, and he was moving even before his conscious brain recognized Tryggvi's powerful command.

He met them before the main clearing. The resistance had hauled in a half-dozen boys and men, obviously Mar but dressed as Giens. They were thin, scrawny, smelly people, obviously dragged from the ditches around a Gien town. The cuts and wounds on them, and the blood on the weapons of Tryggvi's men, gave Harry all the evidence he needed that there had, indeed, been more than 20 when this had started.

Why they were out there became clear when Tryggvi dragged the scarred and devoured face of Stubby into the light.

"What is the meaning of this?" the resistance leader asked.

"Y-you," Stubby started, but Tryggvi threw him to the ground.

"Shut up, Gien," he ordered. The leader turned his amazed gaze on Harry. "Why does the boy return with dozens of people, when I only asked him to bring one?"

Harry bit back the words that formed in his mind. You're not stupid, he wanted to say. How was I supposed to tell him to bring back someone to sacrifice, so that he wouldn't be sacrificed? But he thought, also, what if I had been given that option, save myself by killing one other person? I wouldn't think twice.

The short leader stepped close to the shorter dwarf, the entire camp watching.

"You didn't tell him he would be sacrificed, right, Harry?" Tryggvi said, proving his intelligence again. "What did you say, bring back recruits?"

Harry nodded. "Who would've thought there'd be this many people who'd want to help?"

Tryggvi sneered, briefly, and looked at the groaning figure of Stubby, struggling to his feet.

"Too bad you killed most of them," Harry said.

Tryggvi's head snapped back around to stare at the dwarf. "We should talk about your signals, sometime. Sheep bleating? That's about as normal in Marrishland as a baby killing an ochre."

"There's no way it could be confused with anything around it, then, is there?" Harry knew Tryggvi's small talk was just to pass the time while the rest of his brain worked. The leader kept staring at the seven captives and their Gien clothes and hair cuts, even while he proposed an extensive new waste removal project for Harry to personally work on. The dwarf narrowed his eyes and fought back until the leader held up his hand.

He walked over to one of the older men, thrown to his knees by his captor while they had waited.

"You are Gien," he told the man.

"I am Mar," the man said.

Harry held his breath. He did not care about the captives beyond Stubby, who, arguably, wasn't a captive. But one of them had to be kept alive. And, what would Stubby think of this duplicity? Surely, his opinion of the dwarf and Tryggvi could not go any lower, but if he misinterpreted these instructions so well, what other mistakes might he make? Briefly Harry considered that Stubby had done what he had done on purpose, but his mind couldn't grasp that.

"Do not argue with me," Tryggvi said quietly. "Your life is in my hands."

The man held his chin up higher. "I am Mar," he said again, proudly.

"The Mar have pride," Tryggvi responded. "They have pride in their country. They do not sell themselves to invaders at the first sign of suffering. They fight," he hissed, bringing his face close to the man's sweating one, "like the deadliest of snakes. The Mar's lives depend on their unity, and while you may once have been a Mar, you are no longer. You have given up on your country."

The man swallowed, tried to shy back. "I will ... I mean ..."

"You can perform one last service for your former country," Tryggvi said. "You can save the lives of me and my men."

"Ah, I ... what you say," the man said. "I will do it."

Tryggvi motioned to the men, and the captive was taken away. The leader had chosen his sacrifice. He turned to the other five, and Harry knew what he would do. Quickly, he stepped over by Stubby and hauled the boy to his feet.

"You hungry, lad?"

********

Sometime later, after the mess was cleaned up and Stubby had been given a haircut, Tryggvi and Harry sat near a fire, patching some of their clothes.

"The upside," Tryggvi said, "is that there are a few less of them."

"I had that in mind, all along."

"Don't lie, Harry, you're not very good at it." The leader pulled out his flask and sucked at it for a while. "It's small, but maybe we can get that kid to go back and do it again."

Harry, who had spoken to the shaken Stubby for a long time, trying to calm the lad's nerves, shook his head.

"You should send Cork or someone. Stubby just isn't ... our kind of caliber."

"He's a worse liar than you are?"

"Something like that," Harry said. "The fallout that you ought to consider is how many people Stubby asked who said no, and who they may have told."

The leader grunted. He put away his needle and shook out the shirt, then stared at the fire for a while, his good eye glinting in the light.

"You are learning, Harry. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. What you need to do, and what proves Stubby was worth your fight for him, is that when you asked him for the inch, he gave you the mile. Your question about what I should consider doesn't worry me as much as it will the major in charge of the town, who has to deal with the rumors Stubby left behind of a powerful resistance that was looking for a few good men. However that affects us, the major must divert resources."

He drank from the flask again, tipping it up all the way until Harry was sure it was empty.

"I'll send Cork, yes, but not to lure more people away. No, I'll do it to find out where those resources are being diverted from, and we'll strike there."

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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