For whatever reason, he was one of the few men she knew, Free Bards and Gypsies included, who simply assumed that she was his partner_his equal in most things, his superior in some, his inferior in others. She had met a few men who were willing to accept her as a partner, but Kestrel was only one of three who simply assumed the status, and the other two were Raven and Peregrine. There was a difference, subtle, but very real to her, between that acceptance and assumption. It was a distinction that made a world of difference to her.
He never asked her to prove anything; he simply assumed that if she claimed she could do something, it was true. When she said she could not, he worked with her to find a way around the problem. When he knew how to do something, he asked her opinion before he simply did it_and she gave him the same courtesy.
Like this situation that they found themselves in now; neither of them knew a great deal about wagons, at least of this type, and neither of them were large and muscular. Without any arguing, they had each tried the other's suggestions, and when things didn't work, they simply went on to try something else.
Oh, they had arguments; everyone did. But when it counted, they were partners. Arguments were for times of leisure!
In a peculiar way, even standing in the pouring rain, wet and miserable, cold and besmeared with muck, was a wonderful and rare experience. It proved something to her that she had hoped for all along; that she was his friend, companion, the person he trusted, as well as his lover. She could count the number of couples who could say that on one hand, and have fingers left over.
"Ready?" she asked, when it looked as if he had recovered as much as he was going to. He nodded tiredly.
"C-c-can't d-d-do this m-m-much l-longer," he said, simply. "I'm ab-b-bout gone."
"So am I," she admitted. "And so are the mares. But let's give it what we have, yes?"
He nodded. She counted. On four, she shouted to the horses, and they all strained to the limit.
Nothing happened. Just as nothing had really happened all the times before, no matter what they had tried.
" 'Ware!" she shouted, and they both let go as the horses slacked the harness. The wagon did not even move a great deal as it settled back.
Her good temper finally broke under the strain. She clenched fists and jaw, and glared at the wagon, the pothole, the mud that now reached halfway to the wheel-hub. "Damn," she swore under her breath, as she backed off and stared at the cursed thing. "Stupid, stubborn, blasted, demon-possessed pile of junk!" It was pretty obvious that there was nothing they were able to do alone that was going to free the wheels. They were not going to get it out, and everything they did now that it was obvious was a wasted effort.
She muttered a few Gypsy curses at the wheels under her breath for good measure. Kestrel just pulled the hair out of his eyes and leaned back so that the rain washed the mud from his face. After a few moments with his mouth open, drinking the fresh rain, he lowered his head and looked at her apologetically, as if he thought that he was somehow responsible for the situation.
"It's really s-s-stuck, isn't it?"
She nodded and, in a burst of fading annoyance, kicked the wheel.
As she had known it would, this accomplished nothing except to hurt her toe a little.
"Damn," she swore again, but with no real vehemence; she was too tired. Then she sighed. "It's really, really stuck. Or else something is broken. Let's get the horses under whatever cover we can, and try and dry off before we catch something."
As if to underscore the triumph of nature over the hand of man, the skies truly opened up, sluicing them with rain that seemed somehow much colder than the downpour that had already drenched them.
The horses cooperated, but their harness didn't; stiff leather, soaked with water and heavy, met cold stiff fingers. It took so long to unharness the mares that Robin's temper was well on the way to boiling by the time they had the two sodden beasts hobbled under the scant shelter of a low tree, wrapped in woolen horse-blankets.
They did not tether the team under an oak. And they did spread a canopy of canvas over the branches above, giving each beast a nose bag of grain to make up for their sad excuse for stabling.
Robin and Kestrel finally took shelter in the wagon, involuntarily bringing at least four or five buckets of rain in with them through the open door. By then, they were so cold that Robin despaired of ever feeling warm again. The charcoal stove in the wagon took time to heat up; that made it safer in a wooden wagon, but it meant it took a while to make any difference. In the meantime, they huddled in blankets that didn't seem to help very much even though they were dry.
Robin stared at the tiny stove, willing it to get warmer. The rain showed absolutely no sign of stopping; she'd had a forlorn hope that once they gave up, the rain might, too. She'd even seen a patch of blue to the east, but it had closed up again before it had ever fulfilled its promise.
She and Jonny were too far from any village to walk to shelter, even assuming they would be willing to leave the horses, the wagon and everything in it. Neither of them were, of course. She didn't know if the mares were broken to saddle; if they weren't, trying to ride them would probably end in someone getting dumped on his head.
Besides, only a fool would walk or ride off and leave everything he owned unprotected. She pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders, and shivered. Rain pounded the wooden roof, making it very hard to hear anyone who wasn't shouting.
If I can just get warm again, this could be pleasant....
Oh, the frustration that a little prosperity could bring! And the unexpected discomforts!
The more you have, the more you have to lose, and the less willing you are to let go of it.
Back when she was on her own, traveling afoot, burdened only by her pack and her instruments, she would never have found herself in such a fix. It seemed so long ago that she had been so footloose, and yet it was no more than a few months ago! Hard to believe that this was the first really bad rain of late fall_and she had begun journeying with Lark and Wren at the very end of summer. They didn't even meet Jonny until the first of the Harvest Faires.
If I was still alone, I would be sitting beside a warm fire right now_
Her conscience, which had a better memory than the part of her that controlled wishful thinking, sneered at her and her pretensions. A warm fire? Maybe. If she had been clever enough to read the weather signs and if she had been lucky enough to get a place at an inn. And even if she met both those conditions, there was no guarantee that the fire would be a warm one, and she would probably not be sitting right beside it, but rather off to one side. The paying customers got the flame; more often than not, the entertainers had to make do with the crackle.
Anyway, it would be under a solid roof_