Halfling customs – Round houses, full tables

From the low ridge you can already see Hodenburg. A traveller coming up the road from Eowolf for the first time takes a while to work out what is odd about the view. Then it clicks: the town is round. A ring of houses inside a ring of houses, and in the middle one more circle, with a great domed building and a thin plume of smoke rising above it. The streets run out from the centre like the spokes of a wheel. There are no walls. There is no gate either – just a constable's hut by the road and half a dozen sheriffs lounging on a bench, watching who comes and goes.

The smoke means the Assembly is in session. The circle is a memory of the days when the halflings wandered and drew their wagons into a ring for the night. And the missing walls mean only that the halflings have always had their own way of defending themselves.

Part one: the circle

From wagons to towns

For thousands of years the halflings wandered with their flocks of sheep and goats, and when trouble came they drew their wagons into a ring and had a fortified village on the spot. When they settled in the Shires, the ring stayed. Villages and towns are laid out in circles, and the doors and windows of the houses face inwards. From outside, an attacker sees mostly walls. Barricade the gaps between the houses and the village becomes a fort. When a settlement grows, another ring is added – and that is how a village turns into Hodenburg, where the streets can still be closed off just like the gaps between wagons.

Halflings do not build stone walls, and they are not fond of other people's. A halfling company coming to help a human city pitches camp outside the walls, because the big stone houses of men make them uneasy. The men of the League know this and have a camp ready for them, with food and drink waiting.

Cloctans

The first houses in the Shires looked like the tents of the wandering days, only much bigger. In the old tongue they are called cloctans. Straight timbers are easier to work than curved ones, so in time houses came to be built on six-, eight- or twelve-sided plans. But each upper floor is still smaller than the one below, so the whole thing still looks like a beehive – or, as some put it, like an egg or an apple sliced in half. In the countryside many houses are banked with earth and grass grows over them, until only the doors and windows peep out of the green. A house like that does not burn well when raiders come.

Fewer people build that way now, and the towns have plenty of ordinary square houses in the human style. An old farmstead still looks the same, though: a few cloctans that have sprouted from one another over the generations like a cluster of mushrooms, grassed over on the north and west, with windows and doors facing the sunny side. The barn and sheds form a rough ring around them. Once they were joined by low walls, but as a farm grows the walls tend to disappear, because they get in the way.

Guardburgs

Along the borders of the Shires stand guardburgs – fortified posts. Some are no more than a walled inn or farmhouse with a dozen defenders; in more dangerous places they are strongholds for several hundred. The guardburg on the road to Eowolf is a stone tower and a stone inn with stables, with plenty of room around them where a palisade goes up when needed. Patrols ride out from the guardburgs to give warning of anything that is coming.

Part two: the family

A great many relatives

Halflings have big families. Three brothers and four sisters is nothing unusual, and when someone comes home after a long absence a crowd is waiting outside the farmhouse: brothers and sisters, in-laws, a swarm of nieces and nephews, uncles, cousins, neighbours and hired hands. The introductions take a while.

A clan's land may technically belong to a dozen branches of the family, but the plots lie side by side and at planting time everyone works, from the children to the grandparents. The grown-ups plough and sow; the children milk the cows and goats, tend the smaller animals and card the wool from the freshly shorn sheep. In the wandering days the final word in a family belonged to the eldest, woman or man.

The matriarchs

Today it is mostly men who sit on town councils and in the Assembly. Once the halflings settled, families grew large and the women became more involved in running households than in running villages. That does not mean they have no say. The important decisions for a settlement are often made by the matriarchs of the sprawling families, meeting among themselves – while the men bicker in the council chamber.

It is much the same at home. A father may have grand plans for his son's marriage – say, to the eldest daughter of a neighbour with no sons, so that one more farm joins the family fields. The mother will hear her son out, tell him to be patient, and set to work on his father.

Matches, widows and weddings

An unmarried girl has little freedom and must reckon with her family. A widow has far more: she decides for herself whom to take up with, and when. Propriety demands that before the wedding the couple sleep in separate rooms, preferably at opposite ends of the house, with the parents' bedroom in between.

The wedding itself is very simple, as such things are in the Shires – a short ceremony and it is done. Then comes what really matters: music, dancing and eating until nightfall.

Yule and the equinoxes

The year is marked out by the work in the fields and by feast days. The spring equinox means sowing, and it is when the calves, lambs, piglets and foals are born. The greatest feast is Yule, in midwinter: the whole family gathers, grandmothers and great-aunts included, gifts are exchanged and the eating never stops. Anyone who could not come will later get a letter with the full list – who was there, who brought a new baby, who gave what to whom and what was served. A letter like that can run to a page and a half of names alone.

Gatherings are an old custom. In the wandering days families would come together in great camps that lasted for weeks – to trade, to hold contests and to celebrate, and above all so that young people could find a husband or wife from outside their own family.

Part three: the table

How much a halfling eats

Halflings eat a lot – more than humans, for their size. The day begins with breakfast, and after that, before lunch, comes elevenses. When militia volunteers hear that it is time for the midday break, they vanish into town and come back much later than they should. Their officers soon learn it is better to set up a proper kitchen in camp straight away.

To welcome a son home from a long journey, a mother will all but empty the winter stores. Onto the table go two kinds of soup, wheat bread with a chewy crust, duck, lamb, pork and beef, mashed and fried potatoes, sautéed mushrooms, wine, three kinds of cheese and Shires-brewed ale. An ordinary inn serves less, but still well: soup, fresh bread, fried potatoes, roast beef and good ale. The kitchens of the Shires have also given birth to gastromancy, the enchanting of food – but that is a story for another day.

Pipe and talk

When the plates are empty, the women usually withdraw to the kitchen and the men to the parlour for a pipe. The halflings picked up both the habit and the tobacco plant from the dwarfs, though they smoke less obsessively. A pipe after dinner, a pipe at a council of war, a pipe at every halt on the march. Women light one too, now and then.

Talk over the pipes turns on fields, weather, sowing and the year's young animals. Harvests and shipments, weddings and grandchildren's first teeth interest a family far more than distant events somewhere "away south".

Part four: field and workshop

Golden fields

The Shires live off the land, and the land gives generously: wheat, barley, rye, oats, hops, potatoes, beets, turnips and tobacco. Orchards and vineyards drip with fruit, cheese from the local cows is sold abroad, and Shires ale is a name in its own right – in human towns people ask for it by name. On the Golden Fields, the wheatlands between the border and Hodenburg, windmills turn.

Machines to make life easier

Nearly every halfling – or at any rate nearly every male – is a born tinkerer. Every village, and many farms, have a workshop where things get built "to make life easier". Most of them are ordinary: machines to sow, to weed and to harvest. A seed drill of halfling design drops the grain into the furrow at perfectly even spacing. Thanks to machines like these, a halfling, small as he is, can farm twice as much land as a human.

Metal is another matter. The hills around Tanmill yield mostly copper, with some tin and silver, and iron has to be brought in. There are only a handful of larger foundries in the Shires, nearly all of them near Tanmill. So what leaves the country is food and handicrafts, and hardly any metal goods at all.

Roads, the canal and family firms

The main settlements are linked by roads, paved only in places but kept up by the communities themselves. The bigger towns have cobbled centres and a coaching inn where the stagecoach changes ponies. The Shires' real pride, though, is the canal, which runs from Tanmill to Hodenburg and beyond. It is about forty feet wide with steep banks, and barges carry grain and other freight along it.

Haulage is often a family business. All it takes is a few good years in a row: some brothers each own a farm, one of them breeds oxen, a cousin is a wheelwright – so why pay strangers to cart the grain to town? First you ship your own harvest, then your neighbours', and two generations later every merchant in the region knows the family name with "& Sons" after it.

Part five: the Assembly

No kings

Halflings will not accept hereditary rule. When Bron Abbet, who led the first settlers into the Shires, died, nobody agreed that power should pass to one of his sons. Settlements choose mayors and councils, and sheriffs and constables keep the peace. Votes are cast by families, not by individuals – but it is self-government all the same. Each of the five shires has its own council, which sends three representatives to the Assembly in Hodenburg. The Assembly is led by a Head Councillor chosen for a three-year term.

A beehive with smoke

The Assembly meets in a great hall at the centre of Hodenburg, ringed by a circular park. It is really an enormous cloctan built the ancient way: all curves, no straight sections. The ground floor is stone, and above it huge curved wooden beams arch up to meet at the apex in a beehive shape. The spaces between them are wattle and daub, carefully plastered and painted, pierced by many small windows.

At the top there is an opening. While the Assembly is in session a plume of smoke rises from it – and the whole town knows the councillors are inside. Such sittings can last all day. Sometimes spectators are let in to watch from the gallery, and fathers like to bring their sons along to see how the Shires are governed.

Decisions are announced from the steps outside. A crier in a scarlet cloak and a tall feathered hat climbs onto a platform, clears his throat and calls out: "Hearken, people of Hodenburg!" The crowd falls silent, and when he has finished, boys run off through the town with copies to post wherever they can. After that the announcement is chewed over in every tavern, with ale and a pipe.

The banner

The banner of the Shires is an emerald field with a golden plough in the centre. Around the plough are sheaves of wheat, tobacco leaves, ears of barley, bunches of grapes and hop flowers, and over it all blazes the sun. No swords, no beasts – just the plough and the harvest.

Part six: the militia

Like a fire or a flood

Most halflings think of war the way they think of a fire, a flood or a hailstorm – something unpleasant that has to be dealt with, not something to glory in. They do know how to defend themselves, though. Every community raises its trained band: volunteers who drill a few days a year, man the guardburgs and patrol the border, and spend the rest of their time working at home. Most are young and unmarried, though many turn up for at least one training session a year until middle age. They – or more often their families – are paid in food, and when a band is called out, the town council feeds it.

A band is made up of relatives and neighbours; everyone brings their own weapons, and in the mounted bands their own mount. The corporals are chosen by the troopers themselves. The captain tends to be someone from a well-known family – ideally one whose uncle sits in the Assembly. Women serve too, and not as cooks. Some bands do have a rule that a girl may join only if a relative of hers is already in the ranks. So it happens that a girl at the recruiting table spots a cousin in the queue – and signs him up on the spot.

Muster

When word of danger comes, the band gathers on the circle at the heart of the town. The bands of each shire answer to its Muster Captain, and the whole army of the Shires is commanded by the Muster Master, who is chosen by the Assembly and has a seat in it. His headquarters in Hodenburg is an eight-sided building on the central circle, with a stone ground floor and a timber upper storey. There are no guards at the door. The entrance hall holds portraits of legendary Muster Masters and some tattered flags, and the whole staff may consist of a single secretary. Captains dress like anyone you would pass in the street. A Muster Master might allow himself a long red cloak with an ornate gold pin, and that is about it.

Halfling horns sound different from human ones: instead of brass trumpets they blow rams' horns, with a low, throaty call. Archery has been a favourite pastime since time out of mind, and the shooting contests between villages give the Shires a sizeable reserve in time of war. When the arrows run out, halflings throw stones – with an accuracy they have long been famous for.

Part seven: the People and the others

The tongue

Halflings call themselves the People; in the Shires, Shirefolk. Among themselves they speak the common tongue, but they also have a language of their own, tinker-tongue. Little is written in it, and today it is spoken mostly by the old – some of the young have given it up entirely. Traces survive in names: cloctan is a word from the old tongue, and Yangmere simply means "Laketown". An old halfling may well address a young one in tinker-tongue, just to check whether a long stay among humans has made him forget where he comes from.

Then there is a custom that will last as long as the People do. Halflings worship no gods. They believe their old gods did not die but simply wandered off and got lost, so at every turn they exclaim: "Missing gods!" And when parting, almost by tradition, one says: "I'd ask the gods to look out for you, except…" The other finishes: "…they're missing." And both of them smile.

Every one of the People also knows the song "Homeward Bound". It is sung on the road, especially the road home, and it has more verses than anyone has ever managed to count.

Tall neighbours

Halflings have traded happily with other peoples for centuries, though those peoples tend to regard them with amusement. Humans call them "halfmen" or "sawed-off dwarfs"; halflings call humans "humies". Talking to a human is quite literally a pain in the neck for a halfling, so an experienced one takes a step back to avoid craning his head so far.

In human cities halflings live in their own quarters. First came trade agents from the Shires, then their families, then people who wanted to deal with the humans directly or to serve the rest of the People. They bought or rented the too-large human houses. The better-off remodelled them – shrinking doors, lowering windows, adding an extra floor. A halfling quarter can be recognised by the names over the shops and the brightly coloured awnings on the windows. A typical tavern has big yellow front doors and a tall main room so that humans can come in too, but beyond that the ceilings are low and the doors small, built to halfling measure.

The halflings admire the dwarfs for their engineering, and it was from them that they learned to smoke a pipe. The ratkin they remember all too well. Mothers threaten unruly children with them, and the old gaffers thrill youngsters with tales of the old battles. That is why, when someone calls for help against the ratkin, the mayors of the Shires do not need to be asked twice.

The People of Ej

Far to the south, beyond the Infant Sea, near and within the elven city of Ej, lives the other great branch of the People. The People of Ej have darker, reddish skin, the colour of strong tea, and dark hair, from deep brown to glossy black. They speak the common tongue with an odd accent, address a guest as "Ser", and shake hands dwarf-fashion, gripping the forearm near the elbow. They live alongside the elves peacefully and prosperously. They are herders more than farmers, and they watch their flocks on the slopes of the Blades of Ej from balloons and on mechanical wings.

From the Shires to Ej is over a thousand leagues as the crow flies, and much further on foot. The Long Walk can take up to two years, so few undertake it, but visitors are always welcome – they bring news and new ideas. The best tinkerers of the Shires like to make the trip south to see what their kin have come up with.

Part eight: beasts and trolls

Little aralez

In the League of Rhordia the aralez is a rare, almost magical beast, something like a gigantic dog. It is hard to train, but once trained it is fiercely loyal, and the few men bonded with one are admired as an elite. In the Shires, meanwhile, where folk are as good with animals as they are with crops, breeders have in recent years been raising a smaller aralez that is far easier to train. Many humans consider this almost a sacrilege.

A little aralez is as long and tall as a pony, but nearly twice as broad in the shoulders, with a bigger head and fangs as long as a halfling's hand. At a canter it is slower than a pony, but it jumps superbly and swims the canal without trouble. Horses are afraid of it. The pups are the size of sheep. There are breeders in Abbetshire, and an aralez may be a father's gift to his growing daughter. She may well give the great fanged beast a name like "Fluffy" and swear it is adorable. All the cavalry of the Shires now rides aralez.

The trolls of Abbetsmoor

On the moors of Abbetsmoor near Yangmere, and in the marshes east of the town, live trolls. They have scaly grey-green skin and long green hair, wear loincloths of animal hide, sometimes leather jerkins, and carry great wooden clubs. Their voices sound like a man talking with a handful of pebbles in his mouth, and their common tongue mostly comes down to two questions: "Fight?" and "Eat?"

The folk of Yangmere have traded with them for years. Trolls are happy to hire themselves out for heavy construction, and they helped, for instance, to build the dam at Yangmere Lake. They are paid in food: a sheep or two per troll per day, and after a hard march three is safer. They love a good fight. When the Shires need help, someone in Yangmere who knows the trolls can talk a dozen of them into joining an expedition. The trolls then cross the country with halflings riding in leather packs on their backs, peering over their shoulders. After a battle the trolls string the helmets of their defeated foes into necklaces, hoist their own fallen onto their shoulders and carry them home to the moors. Older brothers in the south of the Shires scare the younger ones with tales of trolls and ogres in the Wildwood. Meanwhile, up in Abbetshire, more than one halfling does business with the trolls and says they are not so fearsome after all.

Part nine: how big it all is

The Shires are a small country, roughly sixty miles by sixty-five. Five shires: Abbetshire, the oldest, in the north; Hoddingshire with Hodenburg as its capital; Southshire to the west of it; Daleshire to the north-west, and beyond that Tanshire. Scholars of the League reckoned that some hundred and sixty thousand halflings live here. To the halflings that seems an impossibly huge number, but it may well be true: villages and farms cover almost every scrap of land that can be ploughed.

Hodenburg, the capital and largest town, is nearly as big as Eowolf, with about thirty thousand people. It has inns with feather beds, heated bath houses (one for men, one for women) and laundries, and it has the Great Heath, a large public garden full of hillocks and orchards. The second-largest town is Yangmere on the northern border. Tanmill, bigger than an ordinary market town, belches black smoke from its smelters and foundries, and behind it rise the Northwolds, the highest hills in the Shires, with their mines. A typical town such as Picksbury has five or six thousand souls and the same pattern of rings as the capital, only smaller.

Golden light

The sun shines over the Shires, even in winter, and nobody can explain why. The halflings do not try. They sow in spring, reap in autumn, gather with the family at Yule and light a pipe after dinner. To outsiders it looks as if that is all there is to them.

Except that a round village can be closed off with a few barricades, a ram's horn calls the band to the circle in the middle of town, and every lad – and many a girl – has been hitting the target with a bow for as long as they can remember. Halflings do not go looking for war. They have simply never forgotten how to draw the wagons into a ring.