Free Arrow's Fall by Mercedes Lackey Page A

something of the fisherfolk. Only the young, healthy, and whole go out on the boats in season; unless my memory is incorrect, the old, the very young, pregnant women, those minding the young children for the rest of the family, and the crippled remain in the temporary work-villages. Am I right?”
    “Aye—and that’s what makes these people so damned hard to defend!” the Lord Marshal growled. “There isn’t a one left behind with the ability to take arms!”
    “Well, according to your figures, a good third of your troopers would be spending all their time on coastwatch. Since you’re going to have to be feeding that many people anyway, why not provision the dependents instead, and have them doing the watching? Once they’re freed from having to see to their day-to-day food supplies, they’ll have the time for it, and what does a watcher need besides a pair of good eyes and the means to set an alert?”
    “You mean use children as coastwatchers?” Gartheser exclaimed. “That—that’s plainly daft!”
    “Just you wait one moment, Gartheser,” Myrim interjected. “I fail to see what’s daft about it. It seems rare good sense to me.”
    “But—how are they to defend themselves?”
    “Against what? Who’s going to see them? They’ll be hidden, man, in blinds, the way coastwatchers are always hidden. And I see the girl’s drift. Puttin’ them up would let us cut down the deployment by a third, just as Gildas and Cathan want,” Lady Kester exclaimed, looking up like an old gray warhorse hearing the bugles. “Ye’d still have to provision the full number, though, ye old tightfists!”
    “But they’d not have to pay ‘em,” one of the others chuckled. “But—children?” Hyron said doubtfully. “How can we put children in that kind of vital position? What’s to keep them from running off to play?”
    “Border children are not very childlike,” Talia said quietly, looking to Kester, and the Speaker for the West nodded emphatic agreement.
    “Silverhair, lad, the only thing keepin’ these children off the boats is size,” Kester snorted, though not unkindly. “They’re not your soft highborns; they’ve been working since their hands were big enough to knot a net.”
    “Aye, I must agree.” Lady Wyrist entered this argument for the first time. “I suspect your fisherfolk are not unlike my Holderkin—as Herald Talia can attest, Border-bred children have little time for childish pursuits.”
    “All the more chance that they’ll run off, then,” Hyron insisted.
    “Not when they’ve seen whole families burned out by the selfsame pirates they’re supposed to be watching for,” said Myrim. “I served out there. I’d trust the sense of any of those ‘children’ before I’d trust the sense of some highborn graybeards I could name.”
    “Well said, lady!” Kester applauded, and turned sharp eyes on the Lord Marshal. “Tell ye what else, ye old wardog—an ye can persuade these troopers of yours to turn to and lend a hand to a bit of honest work now and again—”
    “Such as?” The Lord Marshal almost cracked a smile. “Taking the landwork; drying the fish and the sponge, mending the nets and lines, packing and crating, readying the longhouses for winter.”
    “It might be possible; what were you planning to offer?”
    “War-pay; with the landwork off my people’s hands, and knowing their folk on land are safe, we should be able to cover the extra bonus ourselves, and still bring in a proper profit.”
    “With careful phrasing, I think I could manage it.”
    “Done, then. How say you, Cathan, Gildas?” They were only too happy to agree. The Council adjourned on this most positive note. Selenay and Talia stood as one, and preceded the rest out; Kyril a pace behind them.
    “You have been learning, haven’t you?” Kyril said in Talia’s ear.
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you; and don’t play the innocent,” Elcarth joined his colleague as they stood in a white-clad knot outside the