"You should," Nigel Loring replied. "God preserve me from a leader who likes to fight; that's tolerable in a soldier, bad in an officer, and a disaster in a ruler. But it's all part of what a Chief has to do as well, and you know it." He nodded down the valley. "You're keeping their homes from the torch and their children from death."
"Thank you, Nigel," she said. "You understand."
His hand rested on hers; she turned her fingers and clasped his for an instant, worn and strong like her own. Then he cleared his throat and looked down at the town.
"I suppose we should go find ourselves some lunch."
"That we should," Juniper said, smiling as she neck-reined her horse about.
Sutterdown's horse fair had started modestly in Change Year Two with a group of ranchers bringing surplus stock over the mountains to swap, cutting down on the expense of guards and the risk of bandits by driving their herds together. Then it made sense for folk from other parts of the Willamette to come and buy horses here as well, this being the slack season after the grain harvest and Sutterdown being very well placed. Once the habit was established, it was also a fine chance for anyone with anything to sell to meet potential customers, which made a fine market for food and drink, so crofters from all over the Clan's territories brought their surpluses here.
"So you see, it's very much to our Clan's benefit, because it's to everyone else's as well," Juniper said to Eilir and Rudi. "People meet and exchange ideas and plans and news as well as goods and stock."
Astrid was walking with their party as well, Sam and his lady and their daughter Fand in a backpack, and the Lorings and Little John Hordle. They were all working on icecream cones; it was a fine bright late-summer day, comfortable shirtsleeve weather without being hot, and the morning sun shone from a sky azure from horizon to horizon.
"Beneficial even in small things," Juniper went on. "For instance, the stockbreeders need to rent pasture. Farmers for miles around get a fee for it-and also manure for the fields they plan to plow and plant this fall."
Rudi nodded gravely, but Mathilda wrinkled her nose. "Manure!" she muttered.
"Manure grew the fodder for the cow that made that ice cream and fertilized the beets that gave us the sugar, my girl," Juniper said sternly. "Earth must be fed or we all go hungry."
A horse fair was necessarily a sprawling affair; tents were pitched for miles in every direction, over pastures and harvested grain fields and in orchards still heavy with fruit. There were jugglers and singers as well, and vendors of everything from taffy to toasted nuts, and food stands, and sellers of salvaged books and silverware and jewelry-some new-made, these days-and traveling sword masters showing off their style and taking on all comers for a bet, and wrestlers and martial artists doing likewise, and games where you threw balls to win a prize, and even a few carousels and miniature Ferris wheels, all horse- or ox-powered, of course. The children were goggle-eyed, and Astrid and Eilir and the young Englishmen were enjoying themselves as well; you didn't see many strangers day-today in these years, or hear such a babble of voices talking and shouting and singing, or the mixture of music and neighs and shouts-there was even a table with a woman shifting a pea between three cups.
They came to a big paddock set up with a six-rail fence; there seemed to be a commotion there, and then Juniper saw a horse rearing and bugling its battle call, hooves flailing. "Make way, there!" she said quietly; she knew the difference between a horse venting and one in genuine fear and anger. I won't have cruelty here.
Sam filled his lungs and shouted: "Make way for the Chief!"
People did a double-take and let her and hers through to the fence. For a moment everyone was spellbound, watching tense black loveliness canter around the enclosure, forgetting even the bleeding groom being helped through the gate as hooves seemed to barely touch the ground beneath floating grace. The mare arched her neck and dodged back and forth as she saw the staring mass of humanity, then did another circuit, wedge-shaped head high and high-held tail streaming.
"Oh, my goodness," Nigel murmured. "Sixteen hands, would you say, AUeyne?"
"And a fraction. Warmblood with a fair bit of Arab folded into its family tree," he replied. "Looks a little like a hunter, but faster, I'd say. Fit for a destrier of the best. Have to see how her wind holds up over a long course, but I'd wager she'll run most things on four feet into the ground."
The horse chose that moment to hop in place, lashing out with its hooves behind in case anyone should be sneaking up in its blind spot, then landed and took up its canter without missing a beat.
"Look at her motion, would you, Father? That one has dressage in her genes," said Alleyne. "What a horse!"
Rudi wiggled forward and sprang onto the fence, standing on a rung and resting his hands on the top rail, his face shining. Nobody paid him mind; across the paddock was the party from Larsdalen, Mike Havel at their center. The murmuring died down until it was a background hum, quieter than the drum of shod hooves on packed dirt.
In the quiet, the voices of the men were easy to make out; and the desperation in the voice of the ranch-country wrangler talking to the Bearkiller bossman.
"My lord, you aren't going to see a better horse than Donner here. She's worth every penny of three hundred new silver dollars, but for you, I'll take two seventy-five."
Mike Havel's slanted eyes looked at him coldly; that was a lot of money in terms of the ninth Change Year in central Oregon, where barter was still more common than coin; easily twenty times the price of a good-quality riding horse.
Then he handed his sword to his wife and vaulted over the tall fence with fluid grace, approaching the horse slowly, speaking softly and soothingly. That turned to a curse and a catlike leap backward as it reared and milled its forefeet like lethal steelshod clubs, and then stood with its head cocked and ears forward, nostrils flaring red pits as it snorted warning and wrath.
"You'll never see a more intelligent four-year-old mare," the wrangler said. "See how she's looking at us right now, thinking!"
Havel gave a snort of laughter, almost as loud as the horse. "Mister, she's not looking at us that way because she loves us, and that's a fact, by Christ Jesus."
"You could easily train this one to rear up in battle and strike at the enemy!"
"Well, shit, yeah, and have her get a spear in her belly and leave me standing in front of someone's lance point with my thumb up my ass," Havel said dryly.
"Lord Bear, I've been raising horses all my life and-"
The man stumbled to a stop at a cold gray-eyed gaze. Havel spoke over his shoulder. "Will, how long have you been wrangling?"
The middle-aged ex-Texan. had been watching, squint-eyed. Now he spat into the dirt of the corral and scratched the back of his neck.
"Since my daddy put me on an old cow-pony, when my momma was still changing my diapers," he said. "I've seen that look in a horse's eye before. Back when I was riding roughstock."
Then he slipped between the bars and tried in his turn. "Whoa there, girl. Whoa, there, Donner. Easy, girl, easy, I don't mean you any harm 'tall."
He got two paces closer than Havel had, and had to dodge teeth after a warning snort; Hutton went forward, into the space by its shoulder where a horse has trouble kicking, then backpedaled as it turned and struck with its head extended like a snake.
"That horse is a man-killer!" he swore.
Hutton backed for a moment to be sure the horse wouldn't charge, but it seemed satisfied to have driven him off. Then he turned to the Bear Lord, keeping a weather eye cocked on the mare.
"Mike, this man's right. That's a fine horse; don't think I've ever seen a better, for a war mount; good legs, short back, deep chest; she'll go like a jackrabbit with those haunches and she moves right pretty, as pretty as sun on water. Only you'd have to say it was a good horse, before this damn fool ruint it, tryin' to break her spirit. Look there, see? She's been whipped up under the belly. He's got her afraid of her own shadow, and killing mad at the whole human race besides. This shitheel ain't fit to break a pig's head in with a hammer, much less wrangle a horse."