There was no warning at all; one moment the road was dry, the sun peeked through the clouds -- the next, a cold, sleet-laden downpour soaked them to the skin.
There was nowhere to go, no place to shelter from the torrent. There was nothing on either side of the road but fields; fields of cattle that had wisely huddled together, fields of sheep who also huddled in a woolly mound, or empty fields awaiting the farmer's plow. No trees, just hedgerows; no houses, no sheds, not even a single haystack that they might burrow into to escape the rain.
So they rode onward under the lowering sky, onward into the gathering dark.
Kethry was chilled to the bone in the first candlemark, so cold that she couldn't even shiver. She simply bent her head to the rain, which penetrated her clothing and plastered it to her skin. The cape she wore, which had been perfectly waterproof until that day, was not proof against this rain.
Warrl paced at the heel of Tarma's horse, head and tail down, fur plastered against his skin and looking just as miserable as Kethry felt. At least she was riding -- poor Warrl splashed along the road, ankle-deep in mud.
And even as she thought that, Hellsbane slipped and slid in the mud -- and a moment later, so did Ironheart. Kethry clung to the saddle, dropping the reins to let Ironheart find her own footing; for a heart-stopping moment, she thought that her mount was going to go over, falling on her-
Her heart clenched, her throat closed, and her hands clutched the saddlebow. Ironheart scrambled to get her feet under her again; went to her knees--
And rose. Kethry caught her breath again, as her heart fluttered and slowed. Then her heart dropped into her stomach, as the mare staggered and limped.
She dismounted quickly and felt blindly for the mare's rear hock. Sure enough, her probing fingers encountered an ankle already hot and swelling. She looked up from under a dripping curtain of hair to see Tarma doing the same, and shaking her head.
"Lame," her partner said flatly, when she caught Kethry's eye. "Yours?"
Kethry could only nod glumly.
Just before nightfall, they finally found shelter of a sort. They took refuge in a ruined barn, with just enough of its roof intact to give a place for all of them to escape the rain. By then, Kethry had more bad news. She was not normally prey to female troubles, but the twisting of her guts and a deep ache just behind her navel told her that this session of moon-days was going to be one of the bad ones....
While Tarma struggled to light a fire, she rummaged in the saddlebags for herbs to ease her cramps. And came up with a sodden mess of paper packets. The seam on the top of the bag had parted, letting water trickle in all during their ride.
Behind her, she heard her partner sneeze.
Sneeze? Tarma? She never--
"Sheka," the Shin'a'in swore, her already harsh voice with a decidedly raspy edge to it. Kethry whirled, alarmed.
A tiny fire smoked and struggled to burn already wet wood, and the face Tarma turned up to her partner was red-eyed and red-nosed. The Shin'a'in sneezed again, convulsively, and sniffed moistly.
"Oh, hell," Kethry swore. "Oh, bloody hell."
Tarma nodded, and coughed.
There was nothing for it; wet and sodden as the herbs were, they were all she and her partner had to take care of their ills and the sprained hocks of their horses. She emptied out the saddlebag, carefully; separated the packets of herbs while Tanna tried to find them something dry to change into and started two pots of water boiling on the fire. Herbs for the poultices went right into the wet bandage; for this, at least, it wouldn't matter that they were soaked. As Tarma bandaged the warsteeds' sprains, she made two sets of tea, blessing her teachers for forcing her to learn how to distinguish herbs by taste.
And, given that everything else had been going wrong, Kethry made very certain that the metal pots were no closer to the flames than they had to be -- and that they were quite dissimilar.
Eventually, Tarma found an odd assortment of dry clothing, most of which was ill-suited to the chill of the air. Still, it was dry, and with enough clothing layered on, they might pass the rest of the night a little warmer, if not in comfort.
The tea, as might have been expected, was lukewarm and weak, but it was better than nothing. And meanwhile, Tarma's sneezes and coughs grew more frequent, and her guts twisted.
They sipped their tea, nibbled the soaked remains of one packet of their travel bread. Neither of them had the heart to check further to see if the rest of their rations had suffered from the leak.
"Cand you casd some kind ob sbell?" Tarma asked miserably. "Healig, or somedig?"
"Not while I've got -- cramps," Kethry replied, pausing for the pain to ease. "Anything I do will backfire. I can't hold the concentration."
"Ad I sbose Need wond do anydig, since id's nod life-threadenig?" Tarma sneezed convulsively, and wiped her nose with a leftover bandage-rag.
"That's right. I can't believe this," Kethry said, teeth clenched against a spasm of her stomach. "It's like everything that could go wrong has gone wrong! It's like we've been cursed -- but who would have bothered? And why?"
"Damn ib I doe, Greeneyes," Tarma said thickly. She turned out her purse on the blanket they shared, and a few small copper pieces chinked together. "Ib we ebber get to a town, is this going to be enough to ged more herbs?"
Kethry reached for the coins, and froze, her hand outstretched. There was something there that was not a coin.
"Where did this come from?" she asked, stirring the coins with her fingernail, and turning up something that looked like a coin, but wasn't.
It was about the size of a copper-piece, but was bronze, not copper, and inscribed with odd symbols. Tarma looked at it, her expression puzzled.
"Don'd know," she replied. "Wid da change, maybe. Wad is id?"
Kethry decided that there was nothing more to lose by picking the thing up, and her jaw clenched. "You must have gotten this in with your change," she said, angrily. "From those priests. This is why we've been having all this bad luck. Dammit! It's a cursed coin; has to want it -- and I won't pass this thing off on someone innocent, I just won't."
:Admirable,: Warrl said dryly. :Stupid, but admirable.:
Kethry turned on him. "Don't you start!" she snarled. "If you want to do something useful, we should reach Ponjee tomorrow morning. Help me find someone who deserves this damned thing, then help me think of a way to make him take it!"
Warrl recoiled, his ears flattened, and blinked at her vehemence. Tarma made a choking sound.
It sounded like a suppressed laugh and Kethry raised an eyebrow. "What's so funny?" she asked.
"You won'd like id," Tarma said, still chuckling between blowing her nose and coughing.
"If it's enough to make you laugh-"
"He said, 'Mages be glad I'm a neuder.'"
Kethry blinked slowly, then smiled slowly. No point in getting angry -- and besides, she had just thought of something useful.