* * *
Tarma had to give the man credit; he endured the difficult journey without a single complaint. He weathered the passage of a Gate from one Hawk-brother Vale to another farther north, right on the Border of Valdemar, and he put up with the ride by horseback afterward, in spite of the fact that they rose in the dark and didn't look for beds until well after nightfall, or that the rain drenched them every single furlong of the trip eastward. "I've ridden with Heralds a few times," was all he said, and of the three of them, Tarma was the only one who had any vague idea of what that might mean. She knew what Companions were -- and if they were capable of the sorts of endurance wonders she suspected they were, then the Bard was a tough trooper indeed.
As one of the few Shin'a'in to leave the Plains, Tarma had more contacts among the Hawkbrothers than most of her kin, and partnering with a sorceress had given her a certain stolidity about magic. Her two friends were used to war-magic, and although the Gate excited a little curiosity in them, they weren't terribly startled by it. It was the Bard Tarma expected trouble from--
But strangely enough, it was almost as if his mind went blank from the time they entered the Vale to when they crossed the Valdemar Border. He literally did not remember how they had gotten there. And if Tarma had been inclined to worry about such things, that memory lapse would have seriously bothered her -- but knowing the Hawkbrothers as she did, she suspected they had diddled with the man's mind to make him forget them, and she had no particular objection to such meddling.
Beaker and Jodi were looking forward to this job at Forst Reach, and had immediately fallen into the old habit of looking to her as their commander. She had more experience than they did at handling entrenched behavior problems in horses, but she had every confidence, not only in them, but in their mounts. Graceless and Hopeless were as ugly as their names implied, but they were almost as intelligent as a battlesteed, and had been trained for just this sort of situation. What Jodi and Beaker couldn't handle, their mares could.
And for the really difficult customers -- which would probably be the stud stallions -- Tarma had both Ironheart and Hellsbane. She rode the former, and the Bard and his meager pack and hers were gingerly perched atop the latter, though Tarma had to give Hellsbane special commands before the battlesteed would permit a stranger to ride. Warrl rode on his pillion pad behind Tarma.
This strange little cavalcade clattered up the lane to the Ashkevron Manor just as the wind, which had been blowing steadily out of the north, suddenly turned and came from the southwest.
They were met at the door of the Manor by the Lord himself, whose first words were for Lauren, although he couldn't quite keep his startled gaze off Tarma and her companions. "By the gods, Lauren, we missed you this winter, and your mysterious letter was no compensation! Where in all the hells were you?"
"Finding you that help for your spring plowing problem, old friend," Lauren said wearily, but with a wide smile at the shock and surprise on Lord Kemoc's craggy face. "May I present to you my friends the Swordlady Tarma shena Tale'sedrin of the Shin-'a'in, and her two compatriots, Jodi n'Aiker and Beaker Bowman, of Rethwellan?"
"A Shin'a'in?" Lord Kemoc's eyes nearly bulged out of his face, but he recovered quickly. "You're right welcome to Forst Reach, Ladies, Gents-" He looked somewhat at a loss for something to say, but his lady-wife was under no such difficulty.
"Come in, you're soaked to the skin and no doubt tired to the bone," she said firmly. It was obvious that although she was at a loss as to what their rank and status might be, she was taking them at face value as Lauren's "friends" and ranking them as his equals at least. "You need dry clothing, a good meal, and a warm bed, and anything else can wait until morning," she concluded, with a warning glance at her spouse.
He, wise man, immediately gave way before her; Tarma was not going to argue either.
The lady herself showed them to three rooms, all in a row, with doors on a common corridor. Tarma was in the first, and cheerfully dropped her pack on a bench at the foot of the bed. Neither large nor small, neither luxurious nor sparse, her room had a comfortable-looking bed, a chair, and the bench, with a washstand and a mirror on one wall in the way of furnishings. A fire burned cheerfully in the small fireplace on one wall, and there was glass in the window that looked out over the lane they had just ridden up.
Warrl sighed, and curled up on the hearth rug. :I wonder how the lady plans to solve the riddle of where to seat us at dinner?:
"She won't be seating you anywhere, Furface," Tarma laughed, just as someone tapped on the door.
Like a miracle, there were two servants, one with covered dishes on a tray -- which neatly solved the question of how the lady was going to puzzle out their ranks -- and one with water and a bowl of meat trimmings for Warrl.
Tarma was inclined to be more amused than offended at their hostess's neat sidestepping of protocol. She got a dry tunic and breeches out of her pack and changed into them, draped her wet clothing on the mantle to dry, and left her boots off, wriggling her toes in the warm fur of the rug beside her bed as she sat down to demolish the dinner that Lady Ashkevron had supplied her.
"I hate to admit this, but I prefer this to facing two dozen strangers all staring and trying to pretend they aren't," she told Warrl, once a taste had assured her that the savory portion of meat pie would not have to be put to rewarm beside the fire.
:You'll get your staring eyes soon enough. Tonight the Bard will let the Lady know you're fit for the High Table, and everyone will be able to stare at you as much as they want,: Warrl said, a trifle maliciously. He still hadn't forgiven Tarma for the Gate.
Her high good humor was too strong to let a little jibe like that affect her.
She put her tray outside the door and trotted down the hall to check on Beaker and Jodi. As she had expected, Jodi had simply moved in with Beaker rather than trying to make herself understood, figuring that their hosts would get the correct idea when only one room was in use. Jodi was just finishing her own dinner; Beaker had inhaled his and was examining one of the half dozen books that graced a little desk in their room.
"Wish I could read this," he said wistfully, as he put it down and moved to join Tarma and his partner in the door of his room. "I can speak a bit of their lingo, but the writing's beyond me."
"You aren't going to have time to read," she told him. "At least not for the next couple, weeks. Did you see the size of the stables as we rode in? Figure on the sheer number of problem children they've got!"
While Beaker sat down on the hearth rug beside Warrl, using him as a backrest, Jodi's eyes lit up. Jodi was never happier than when she was working.
"I speak the language pretty well, so just let me translate for now," Tarma went on, sitting tailor fashion on the bed so that Jodi could take the chair. "If we do well here -- tell you what, this just might be the long-term position you were looking for. It's obvious they don't know a thing about horse-talking, or they wouldn't be having the difficulty that they are."
Jodi nodded, pursing her lips. "This is all speculation, of course, but I'll bet that though their foundation stud did have a miserable disposition, the only thing wrong with their current crop is that they're too intelligent. They know they can get away with misbehaving, so they do. These horses are spoiled, that's what's wrong with them."