Except, of course, me.
The haywagons stopped at a very special checkpoint before they were ever let inside the grounds of the Fair, an inspection point manned by more recruits. Each wagon was inspected from the ground up—and the recruits themselves had been very carefully instructed and frightened to within an inch of their lives by Geyr.
Quite an impressive little talk he gave them. “If any of you let anything past that either harms the horses or breaches our security, I’ll hamstring you myself. “ And him standing there slapping a gelding-knife into his glove, over and over....
And this year, Geyr had a new twist on the inspections—a set of enormous mastiffs as tall as a child’s first pony. Geyr claimed they had noses “keen enough to track the West Wind.” He’d acquired them on the march home last year, but had been looking for something like them ever since a load of poisoned grain killed two horses on campaign.
He wanted to use them as additional camp-guards and on scouting runs. Kero was a bit doubtful of the latter—she couldn’t see how Geyr would keep them from barking, for one thing—but she had agreed to try them out as wagon inspectors. Their sense of smell was certainly as good as Geyr claimed, and they could be trained to recognize any scent and alert their handler to it. And their sheer size had the wagoners as terrified of them as the recruits were of Geyr.
I suppose now the other Companies are going to start calling us “the dog-and-pony show,“ she thought with a sigh. I could keep those little messengers out of sight, but I’m never going to be able to hide those monsters.
On the other hand, Warrl had been damned useful to the Sunhawks. What these mastiffs lacked in intelligence, they might make up for in strength, size and numbers.
I wonder where he got them. She still suspected they were from the Pelagirs. He had spent quite a bit of time in the company of Kra’heera, the cousin that just happened to be an apprentice shaman. What the shaman didn’t know about the Pelagirs, the Hawkbrothers did, and the Hawkbrothers and shaman were probably talking more than most people guessed.
We were coming up through Ruvan, along the Pelagiris Forest; we met up with a couple of the cousins on the way, after I’d left word of our route with one of the Outriders. I remember that he and Kra’heera vanished about the same time, telling me he’d get back to the fort on his own—then in he comes, just before the first snow, with the bitch and her half-grown litter of fourteen. That kind of fertility all by itself is suspicious, and smacks of the Pelagirs.
The Shin’a’in didn’t use dogs much, except for herding sheep and goats—but the Hawkbrothers might well have been able to produce something like Geyr’s dogs on very short notice.
She watched them checking out the wagons, one on each side, and it did not escape her notice that they performed their duty with a brisk efficiency that reminded her of her own veterans. Certainly there was an odd look of intelligence in their eyes—unlike Geyr’s little messenger-dogs, who had brains that would shame a bird, or at least acted like it. They knew three things only—eat, run, and be petted.
I tried Mindtouch, but all I got was images, not the kind of real speech I got from Warrl or Eldan’s Companion.
Damn. Thinking of the Companion always made her think of Eldan—and she’d had another dream last night. She caught herself caressing the smooth fabric of her sleeve at the mere thought, and clenched her fist. Damn him. You’d think after ten years I could forget the man.
Maybe Kra’heera could suggest something to make the dreams stop. Though she’d have to tell him why she wanted them to stop. And that could be—embarrassing. Her Shin’a’in cousins had much the same dry sense of humor as Tarma, but they occasionally got a bit odd even for Kero, and the Shin’a’in notion of what was funny didn’t always match hers.
It was amazing how fast the Clan had grown, once the children that had elected to take Clan membership were of an age to claim it. They’d had as many young adults join them as they could provide tents for. Part of it had to be the glamour, the mystique of the “Clan that could not die”—certainly orphans and “extra” children had flocked to the Tale’sedrin banner once it was raised again.
But part of it, no doubt, had to do with my cousins’ sheer good looks. They’re all damned attractive, and with Grandmother’s green eyes and Grandfather’s blond hair, they must have been as exotic and fascinating to the Shin’a‘in suitors as the Shin’a‘in are to us.
None of them had lacked for potential partners, and in the end, all but one had taken up multiple marriages. Like queen bees with entourages, or stags with harems. No, I don’t think I’ll tell Kra’heera about the dreams of Eldan. He’ll only give me a hard time about it, and ask me why I didn’tjust knock the man in the head and carry him off with me like a sack of loot. Besides, he’s young enough to be my own child; I just can’t confess something like that to a person who looks like he’s waiting for me to tell him a story. Gods, they make me feel ancient.
Though still small, the Tale’sedrin Clan was as thriving as any on the Plains, boasting no less than three shamans, a Healer, and even a Kal’enedral—
The last was Swordsworn by choice, rather than because of the kind of circumstances that forced Tarma to her vow. Kero liked him the best of all of them. He never turned her away when she asked for lessons, and his sense of humor was a little less mordant than the rest of her cousins.
Her thought of them might have summoned them; they made no noise on the stairs with their soft boots, but she heard their distinctive chatter echoing up the shaft of the staircase long before she saw them.
“Heyla, cousin!” Istren, one of the two horse-trainers along this year and the only one of the three who was actually related to her by blood, sprang into the room as if he were taking it by storm. He was followed at a more sedate pace by the other trainer, Sa’dassan, and the shaman-in-training, Kra’heera. Where Istren boasted the dusky-gold skin of his Shin’a’in father, and his father’s black hair, his mother’s startling green eyes flashed at Kero with excitement.
“Second cousin, to be precise,” Sa’dassan said mildly, her Shin’a’in blue eyes as tranquil as a cloudless sky. “And both a Captain of the Company and your elder. A little more respect, youngling.”
Istren ignored her; when a normally reserved Shin’a’in became excited, it was pretty hard to get them calmed down. “Have you heard, Cousin Kero? Have you seen? What do you know about these North men, these Valdemar men?”
For one startled moment, Kero thought he was talking about her dream and Eldan, and her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. But Kra’heera solved her dilemma for her, by snorting, “What, do you think she is a mage, like our uncle? She can’t possibly know anything—these Valdemar men have only just arrived.”
She shook herself out of her paralysis. “What Valdemar men?” she asked.