"How many."
Aldric said it at the gate without dismounting.
The courier — a Ranger from the south circuit, with frost in his beard and the long hard set of a man who had ridden three days straight on the southern road — was already drawing breath when the question landed.
"My lord. Twenty-eight this morning. Thirty-one the day before. Two days before that, forty. By the count of my horse's last spot-check on the road, my lord — there are perhaps two hundred and forty more on the road still south of the long bend. Not in a column. In small groups. Families mostly. One band of perhaps thirty are moving as a unit; the rest in twos and threes and fives. By the count my partner sent up from the post at the foot of the hills, my lord — three hundred or so before the snow shuts the south road. Half of those will be at this gate within the week."
"Children among them."
"Many, my lord. Two-thirds women and children, by the rough count. The men with them are — by my eye — older, or younger, or wounded. Fighting-age men are not in this number."
"Why are the fighting-age men not in this number."
"My lord — they are dead. By the testimony of the three women we spoke to at the post, the orcs at Dunharrow took every man between sixteen and forty for the war-bands at the foot of the mountain in the spring. Those who refused were killed at their hearths. The clans that fled south are gone south to the coast. The clans that fled north — those are the people on your road, my lord. They are not a column. They are what is left of a clan that no longer has a column."
Aldric registered it.
He registered it without surprise. He had been waiting, since the southern ridge two months past, for the second consequence of Wulfgar's testimony — the first having been the signed safe-conduct letters that had gone south with the seven Dunlendings under the captain's own escort, and the second having been the news, which Wulfgar himself had given Tauriel in the chamber three weeks ago, that the safe-conduct letters carried Aldric's seal on paper that could be read at any clan-hearth on the north-Dunland coast, and that the news of those letters would, by the seventh day after their delivery, be carried by the clan-criers of three coastal villages to the inland clans whose villages had not, this year, gone south to the coast for the winter.
The inland clans had been brutalised by Saruman's recruiters all autumn.
The inland clans had heard of the safe-conduct letters at the bottom of the worst winter their people had known.
Three hundred of them, by the courier's count, were now on his road.
He turned in the saddle.
Maira was at the inner gate. She had come down from the keep at the courier's arrival; she had been at her desk in the inner administration wing when the gate-watch had rung the long single tone of an unscheduled approach, and she had crossed the courtyard in the time it took the gate-watch to confirm the rider. She had stopped at the inner gate at the proper distance. She had not, on his turning, spoken.
"Captain."
"My lord."
"You have, by your count, a percentage on this."
"My lord. I have ten."
"Ten."
"My lord — ten percent of any refugee body of this size, by the standard practice of intelligence work in any country I have read about, will contain hands placed by the enemy who profits from the displacement. Saruman has been brutalising these clans for half a year. Saruman will not, by my reading, have failed to use that brutalisation to set hands inside a body that is — by every measure — moving toward our gate by his own engineering of the conditions. Three hundred refugees is — my lord, by the math, thirty agents. Most of those will be unsophisticated; some will be sophisticated; one or two will be planned for the long run. I am not, my lord, by my account, going to give you a number lower than ten. I would, if I gave you a number lower than ten, be lying to you."
A pause.
"And by your proposal."
"My lord. The intake to be conducted at the south camp, not at the gate. A holding camp for six weeks under the second steward's supplies. Documented arrival of every name, with the small clan-mark and the small physical description, and the testimony of each adult given separately. A rolling cross-check of testimony for inconsistency. The clan-criers — those of them who came up with the refugees — to be questioned first, by my own hand. The men of fighting age, if any, to be held separately in the first two weeks. The wounded to be tended by our healers in a tent at the camp, not in the keep. The children to be admitted to the keep settlement only after the parent or guardian has cleared the intake. The full intake closed in six weeks. After that, those cleared are admitted to the keep settlement under residency-clauses to be drafted by Celwyn. Those not cleared are, by the same process, escorted under flag to the eastern circuit, where the Rangers will take them on as a separate matter."
"That is the proposal."
"My lord — that is the proposal."
He inclined his head.
He did not, then, immediately answer.
The wind off the long south road was cold; the courier's horse had been steaming at the chest when he came up; the gate-watch had drawn cloaks over their shoulders against the morning. The keep behind him was at its winter-rhythm. Somewhere, in the upper chamber, Tauriel was at the eighth month of the second pregnancy and was not, by her own habit and by Arethil's instruction, at the gate this morning.
She was, however, watching from the upper window.
He could feel the watching.
He turned the horse and rode in through the inner gate.
[THE UPPER CHAMBER — AN HOUR LATER]
Tauriel was at the long bench under the window.
She was sitting, which she had been doing more of since the seventh month; she had set down the bow at the end of autumn at Arethil's instruction; she had not, on the setting-down, complained. She had Cael on the long fur at her feet — the boy was nearly three now, in the small steady careful Sindar count Arethil kept and which Aldric had stopped keeping his own count alongside in the spring — and Cael was at the small wooden horse Halbarad had had made for him at the year-mark.
She turned at the sound of the door.
"You read it."
"I read it."
"Maira."
"Maira said ten percent. Six-week intake. South camp. Documented arrival. The proposal — by the standard practice of any intelligence work, Tauriel — is sound."
"Yes."
She did not, in the yes, concede.
She set her hand flat on the long bench beside her.
"Aldric."
"Tauriel."
"It is winter."
"It is winter."
"There are two hundred and forty more on the road. Children. Women whose men were killed at their hearths. They have walked, by the courier's count, eight days from the foot of the long mountain at a pace that has, by my reading of the count, killed perhaps thirty of them on the road already. The thirty that have died are not on the courier's number. The thirty that have died are why the number is three hundred and not three hundred and thirty. If the intake at the south camp takes six weeks, and the south camp is at the proper distance from the gate, and the south camp has only what the second steward can put in it in three days — Aldric, in six weeks, a hundred of them will be dead at the south camp. Ten percent of three hundred is thirty. Thirty are not agents. Thirty are why these people are at our gate. The math Maira is doing is — sound. The math Maira is doing is the math of a captain whose work is to keep enemies out. The math is not the math of a country that has — at the bottom of a winter — three hundred souls on its road. The math of the country is a different math. The country's math says — open the gate."
He looked at her.
He did not, for a long beat, say anything.
He had known, on the ride in from the gate, that this was the conversation. He had known it on the first sentence of the courier's count. He had known it, in some smaller part of him, since Wulfgar's seven had ridden south under the safe-conduct letters and he had been told, by Tauriel in the chamber on the night of Wulfgar's safe-conduct letter-drafting, that the letters were not going to be read once — they were going to be read by every coastal criers' circle from the eastern shore of Dunharrow to the north-Dunland coast.
The letters had been the door.
The three hundred were the people now walking through the door.
He thought about Maira's ten percent.
He thought, in the long flat way he had been thinking about Saruman since the southern ridge, that ten percent of three hundred was thirty agents, and that thirty agents would, by Maira's own further reading at the inner administration wing this morning, be working at a country that — by virtue of having opened the door at all — would be a country whose habit of hospitality had become a structural feature. The thirty agents would, in the country he was building, find purchase. Some of them would, over time, become not agents but residents. Some of them would, over time, become not residents but workers in his administration. The risk was not — in the long count of a country at peace and approaching war — the risk of being penetrated by thirty agents. The risk was the risk of being the kind of country that, by its own design, welcomed what came to its door, including what came to its door dressed in the cloth of suffering and carrying inside that cloth the small careful hand of the man who had engineered the suffering.
He looked at the worn place on the rug where the morning light was, at this hour, lying.
He looked at Cael at the small wooden horse.
He looked at Tauriel.
He said: "Open the gate."
She inclined her head.
"And Maira."
"Maira's intake runs at the gate, not at the south camp. Documented arrival. Clan-mark, physical description, clan-of-origin, name of nearest adult relative. Maira's clerks at the gate from first light to last light. The fighting-age men — if any — held under guard at the inner barracks for two weeks under the customary form, not under chains. The clan-criers questioned by Maira's own hand within the first three days. The wounded tended in the inner infirmary, not in a tent. The children to the keep settlement with their parents under the same residency-clauses Celwyn will draft. The cross-check Maira proposes runs over the first three weeks, not six. After three weeks the cleared are residents. The not-cleared are not escorted under flag to the eastern circuit; they are interviewed a second time, by you and by me both, and the matter is decided here. We do not — Tauriel, I want you to hear this — we do not export the not-cleared to a partner who will have to take them or refuse them at our request. We resolve the not-cleared at this gate. We accept the risk that some of the not-cleared will be — at the end of the second interview — granted residency anyway. We accept the further risk that the risk we accept will be used against us. That is the risk of the country we are building. We carry the risk."
"And the ten percent."
"The ten percent we carry. Maira will, in the long six months after the intake closes, find as many of them as she can. The rest we live with. The country we are building has thirty agents in it before this morning. It has thirty more by tonight. The arithmetic of agents is not the arithmetic that wins this war. The arithmetic that wins this war is the arithmetic of a country that, when Saruman's hand drove three hundred Dunlending souls to our gate, opened the gate."
She set her other hand against the small of her back where the second child sat heavily now.
"You took my call."
"I took your call. I am not, in any of the next half-year of this, going to tell anyone in this country that the call was mine. The call was yours. The endorsement is mine. The risk is mine. Maira will hear from me in the next hour that the proposal is not the proposal we are running. She will hear my reasons. The reasons will go in the record. If, in five years, the country looks back and asks why we opened the gate, the answer will be in the record. The answer will be that the Lady opened it because the Lady is the voice of the country at its gate."
"Aldric."
"Tauriel."
She drew the slow breath she had been drawing since the eighth month had landed on her like a coat with stones in the lining, and she let it go.
She said, very quietly: "Bring me the first three names when they come through. I will write them in my own hand."
He inclined his head.
He went out to find Maira.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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