“Sh,” said Umbo. “I think Loaf is waking up.”
“Unless he’s been awake the whole time, listening.”
Umbo grimaced. “It would be just like him.”
But Loaf seemed not to have heard anything. He was perfectly normal toward them when he woke up—surly and deferent and helpful all at once.
Rigg asked him, “You worked the river yourself, didn’t you?”
“Never,” said Loaf.
“But you’re as muscular as these men.”
“No I’m not,” said Loaf. “I’m much more so.”
Rigg looked at him carefully. “I can see that you’re different from them, but not how.”
“Look at my right shoulder and then at my left. Then look at the rivermen.”
Rigg and Umbo both looked. Umbo saw it first, and chuckled. “They favor one side.”
Now Rigg could see it. They were each stronger on one side of their body than the other, from years of working the same side of the boat.
“On military boats they’re not allowed to do that,” said Loaf. “They make them change sides in regular shifts so they stay even.”
“So were you a military boatman?”
“Military, but not on a boat,” said Loaf. “Before I met Leaky and married her and built the tavern, I was in the army. Got to be a sergeant, a good squad of tough men.”
“Did you fight in any wars?” asked Umbo.
“We haven’t had a war in my lifetime,” said Loaf. “Even the People’s Revolution was back when I was a baby. But there’s always fighting and always killing, because there are always people who won’t do the will of the People’s Revolutionary Council, and always wild people at the edges of civilization who won’t respect the boundary or any other law. Barbarians.”
“So are you a bowman?” asked Umbo eagerly. “A swordsman? Or do you work the pike or the staff? Will you show us?”
“The boy is in love with the idea of soldiering,” said Loaf. “Because you’ve never seen a man holding all his guts in his lap, begging for water because he’s so thirsty, but has no stomach left for the water to go into.”
Umbo gulped. “I know people die,” he said. “They die at home, too, and sometimes in pretty terrible ways.”
Rigg thought of Father under the tree and Kyokay slipping from the rim of Stashi Falls. At least he hadn’t actually seen what the tree did to Father’s body, or what happened to Kyokay when he hit the turbulent, rock-filled water.
“Nothing is more terrible than the way men die in war,” said Loaf. “One slip and your enemy has the best of you. Or you’re walking along and suddenly, pfffft, there’s an arrow in your throat or your ear or your eye or your back and if you aren’t killed outright, you know it’s over for you, it saps the strength from you.”
“But you had an equal chance,” said Rigg. “Or maybe not equal, but you were trained for it. Killing and therefore dying. It can’t be a surprise to a soldier when he dies.”
“Take it from me, boy, death is always a surprise even if you stand there staring it in the face. When it comes, you think, ‘What, me?’”
“How do you know,” said Umbo. “You’ve never died.”
In answer, Loaf lifted up his overshirt and revealed his chest and belly. The man was so huge that Rigg had assumed he was fat, but no, his whole body followed the bulges and creases of his musculature, and veins stood at the surface everywhere instead of hiding in layers of fat.
And running right up his belly, just a little off center to the right, there was a savage scar, still partly red, and it hadn’t been stitched up right, so the skin puckered on one side or the other all the way up and down it. “I’m the man who held my guts in my hand,” he said. “I counted myself as dead. I refused to let my men waste any time trying to take me off the battlefield. I named another man as their new sergeant and ordered them to retreat with the rest of our men. Later they went ahead and won, but they never came back to the battlefield. They knew there’d be nothing left of anyone.”
“Why not?” asked Umbo.
“It doesn’t sound very loyal,” said Rigg.
“Scavengers, my boys,” said Loaf. “The battlefield was empty no more than a minute before these women and old men and boys were among the fallen, killing the wounded and taking their clothes and weapons and whatever else could be found. War brings ’em, like crows to carrion. So there I lie, expecting to die—hoping it doesn’t take long because it hurts in waves like the sea, each one pounding through me and I’m thinking, this is the one that carries me off into death, but it didn’t. I hear footsteps, I look up, and there’s this huge woman standing over me.”