“They must think we’re brigands,” Seri said, frowning. “They wouldn’t be penning them that early, else.”
“We’d better change their minds,” Aris said, “or we’ll be spending another night on the hard ground.” He turned his horse downslope. Seri followed. From their height, they could see the scurrying figures, the dogs working the sheep far too fast . . . and one broke away at a gate, bounding up the hill toward the riders, followed by a dark streak of sheepdog. A shrill whistle from below brought the dog to a halt, growling, then it raced back down the hill. The sheep, moving with the single-minded intensity of the truly stupid, made for the gap between Aris’s horse and Seri’s. Seri flung herself off her horse and made a grab for it.
“Idiot!” Aris said. Grabbing a determined sheep is harder than it looks, and jumping on one from above is chancy at best. Seri had a double-handful of wool and a faceful of stony hillside as the sheep, bleating loudly, did its best to jerk free. Aris swung off his horse and grabbed for a hind leg, then the other. With the sheep in a wheelbarrow hold, Seri could get a foreleg and then they could flatten the sheep out and decide how to get her back down to the fold.
A bellow from below caught his attention—and there, making surprising speed up the steep slope, was a tall man and a boy, with two sheepdogs. “Let loose o’ my sheep!” the man yelled, when he saw Aris watching.
“She was gettin’ away!” Seri yelled back. “We just caught ’er for you.”
“An’ sheep are born wi’ golden fleece,” the man yelled. “I know your kind. You catch sheep all right, and then ye make sure they don’t escape—yer own stomachs.” He waved the dogs on, and they came, bellies low, swinging in from either side. Aris started to rise, but then saw what the horses were doing. Each horse had put itself between a dog and the pair with the sheep—and the sheepdogs found themselves herded back as neatly as ever they’d worked a flock. The man and his boy stopped a short distance below. “That can’t be,” the man said, half in anger and half in wonder. “Horses don’t do that.”
“Ours do,” said Seri, almost smugly. The sheep picked that moment to thrash again and kick her with the loose foreleg. “D’you want us to bring your sheep down, or will your dogs pen her for you?”
The boy came nearer, out of reach of his father’s arm. “Aren’t you robbers, then?”
“Not us,” Seri said cheerfully. “Here—you take her.” She beckoned, and the boy came up and got a foreleg hold on the sheep himself. At his soft voice, the sheep quit struggling; Seri stepped back and looked at the man. “I’m sorry we frightened you,” she said. “We’re not robbers, even if Ari does have your sheep by the hind legs. We thought we’d help you.”
“You could help me,” the man said slowly, “by letting go of my sheep.” Aris shrugged, let go, and stood. The sheep scrambled up awkwardly; the boy still had a grip on one foreleg. “Let’s go, Varya—let’s see what these folk do.” The boy let go, and the sheep stood, ears waggling. He said something to her, and she followed a few steps. Then the man whistled, and waved an arm, and the two dogs closed in on the sheep. She edged her way downhill.
“You don’t act like robbers,” the man said then. “But I never heard of honest travellers . . . where are you from?”
“Fin Panir,” Aris said. His horse walked up and laid its head along his arm. He rubbed the base of its ear absently, and then the line between jowl and neck.
“Girdish folk? Is that why you’re wearing blue?”
“Yes,” said Seri. “We’re in training to be Marshals.”
“Whatever that is,” the man said. He stood silent some moments, and Aris had almost decided to mount when he said, “You might as well come down wi’ us for the night; I don’t want your deaths on my conscience.”
“Deaths?” Seri asked.
“Aye. There’s things in the dark—surely you know that. We don’t take chances any more, between human robbers and those other things, the blackrobes, and sometimes wolves and that, things running in packs. We’d have brought the sheep down early even without seeing you. Come on, now. No time to waste. There’s chores.”
The farmer showed no surprise when Aris and Seri both proved handy at the evening chores. Perhaps, Aris thought, he didn’t know there were people in the world who couldn’t milk, who couldn’t tell hay from straw, for whom wheat and oats and barley were all just “grain.” The farm buildings were larger than those Aris had seen before, well built and weathertight. They met the farmer’s wife, his other children, all younger than the boy on the hill. And they ate with the family, sharing some berries they had gathered that day.
“So what brings you this way, Girdsmen?” the farmer asked. “Is it part of Marshals’ training to wander around frightening honest farmers?”
“No . . . the wandering, perhaps, but not the rest.” Seri rested her chin on her fists. Aris watched the faces watching her, the children all intent and eager just because she was a stranger. The farmer’s wife sat knitting busily, looking up only now and then as she counted stitches. “To tell you the truth, there’s new ideas about how Marshals should be trained. Do you have a grange here?”
“Nay.” The farmer sounded glad of it. “We had better things to do than get involved in your war and go around killing folk. We stayed here wi’ our sheep, as farmers should. So all that about grange and barton and Marshals, all that means naught to us.” He gave Seri a challenging glance, as much as to say And take that as you please.
Seri just grinned at him. “You were lucky, then. Aris and I had the war come upon us as children; we had to grow up hedgewise. Then Father Gird took us in—”
“Was that a real man, Gird, or just a name for whoever was leading?”
“A real man,” Seri said. Aris could hardly believe that anyone doubted it; did these farmers never leave their little hollow? “He took us in, Ari and me, when we’d been living with farmers, because Ari has the healing magery.”
“Mageborn!” The farmer glared at Aris; no one else in the room moved or spoke. “I let a mageborn in my house?”
Seri shrugged. “Father Gird let him in his house. And told everyone to let him use his magery. Healing’s good, he said.”
“Is it true, lad? You can heal?” The farmer’s voice rumbled with suppressed anger.
“Yes,” Aris said. “But not all things, though I’ll try.”
“Come on, then.” The farmer heaved himself up from the bench, clearly expecting Aris to follow. He caught Seri’s eye, and she rose as well. “What’s that?” the farmer asked. “I thought you said he had the healing—why are you coming?”
“Gird said Aris must have someone to watch him.” Seri said. “I travel with him for that reason.”
“Huh. Don’t trust him, eh?” By his tone, he approved: no one should trust mageborn.
“I do,” Seri said, “and so do those who’ve worked with him before. But Gird set the rule, and the Council holds by it.”
With a last grunt, the farmer led them upstairs. Aris had not seen stairs in a farmer’s house before. He wondered if the farmer had taken over a small manor house. But he had no time to ask, the farmer flung wide a door on the left of the passage. There on a low bed lay a man near death from woundfever. “It’s my brother,” the farmer said. “He and his family lived here with us, and this is all that’s left. They killed his wife and oldest child one night when we were out late, in lambing time. She’d gone out to bring us food. The younger children, two of them, died of a fever—they’d been grieving so, I think they had no strength. The others are with mine, of course. But a hand of days ago, maybe, he thought he heard voices outside, near the pens. He didn’t wake me afore going out to see, and by the time I woke, and got outside, this is what I found. Heal him, if you can.” His gaze challenged Aris.