SLAVERY IS A tradition in the Chalced States, and is at the heart of much of its economy. They claim prisoners taken in war are the major source of its slaves. However, a great portion of the slaves who escape to the Six Duchies tell tales of being taken in pirate raids against their native lands. Chalced's official stance is that such raids do not occur, but Chalced also officially denies that they turn a blind eye to pirates operating from the Trade Islands. The two go hand in hand.
Slavery has never been commonly accepted in the Six Duchies. Many of the early border conflicts between Shoaks and the Chalced States had more to do with the slavery issue than actual boundary lines. Shoaks families refused to accept that soldiers wounded or captured in war would be kept the rest of their lives as slaves. Any battle that Shoaks lost was almost immediately followed by a second savage attack against the Chalced States to regain those lost in the first battle. In this way, Shoaks came to hold much land originally claimed by the Chalced States. The peace between the two regions is always uneasy. Chalced constantly brings complaint that the folk of Shoaks not only shelter run away slaves, but encourage others to escape. No Six Duchies monarch has ever denied the truth of this.
My whole drive now was to reach Verity, somewhere beyond the Mountain Kingdom. To do it, I would have to cross all of Farrow first. It would not be an easy task. While the region along the Vin River is pleasant enough, the farther one travels from the Vin the more arid the countryside becomes. The arable stretches are given over to great fields of flax and hemp, but beyond these are vast stretches of open, uninhabited land. The interior of Farrow Duchy, while not a desert, is flat, dry country, used only by the nomadic tribes who move their herds across it, following the forage. Even they forsake it after the "green times" of the year are past, to congregate in temporary villages along rivers or near watering places. In the days that followed my escape from Tradeford Hall, I came to wonder why King Wielder had ever bothered to subjugate Farrow, let alone make it one of the Six Duchies. I knew that I had to strike away from the Vin, to head southwest toward Blue Lake, to cross vast Blue Lake, and then follow the Cold River to the hems of the Mountains. Yet it was not a journey for a lone man. And without Nighteyes, that was what I was.
There are no sizable cities in the interior, though there are rudimentary towns that subsist year-round near some of the springs that randomly dot the interior. Most of these survive by virtue of the trade caravans that pass near them. Trade does flow, albeit slowly, between the folk of Blue Lake and the Vin River, and by this same path do the goods of the Mountain folk come into Six Duchies hands. The obvious course was to somehow attach myself to one of those caravans. Yet what is obvious is not always easy.
When I had entered Tradeford town, I had looked to be the poorest type of beggar imaginable. I left it finely dressed, on one of the best animals ever bred at Buckkeep. But the moment after I had parted with Arrow, the gravity of my situation began to dawn on me. I had the clothing I had stolen and my leather boots, my belt and pouch, a knife and a sword, plus a ring and a medallion on a chain. In my pouch there were no coins left at all, though it did contain implements for fire making, a sharpening stone for my knife, and a good selection of poisons.
Wolves are not meant to hunt alone. So Nighteyes had once told me, and before the day was out, I came to appreciate the wisdom of that statement. My meal that day consisted of rice-lily roots and some nuts a squirrel had hoarded in too obvious a hiding place. I would gladly have eaten the squirrel, who sat overhead scolding at me as I raided his cache, but I had not the means to make that wish a reality. Instead, as I pounded the nuts with a stone to open them, I reflected that one by one, my illusions about myself had been stripped away.
I had believed myself a self-sufficient and clever fellow. I had taken pride in my skills as an assassin, had even, deep down, believed that although I could not competently master my Skill ability, my strength at it was easily the equal of any in Galen's Coterie. But take away both King Shrewd's largesse and my wolf companion's hunting ability, subtract from me Chade's secret information and plotting skill and Verity's Skill-guidance, and what I saw left was a starving man in stolen clothes, halfway between Buckkeep and the Mountains, with small prospect of getting any closer to either one.
Satisfyingly bleak as such thoughts were, they did nothing to assuage the nagging of Verity's Skill-suggestion. Come to me. Had he intended for those words to burn into my mind with such command? I doubted it. I think he had sought only to keep me from killing both Regal and myself. And yet now the compulsion was there, festering like an arrowhead. It even infected my sleep with anxiety, so that I dreamed often of going to Verity. It was not that I had given up my ambition of killing Regal; a dozen times a day, I constructed plots in my mind, ways in which I might return to Tradeford and come at him from an unexpected angle. But all such plots began with the reservation "after I have gone to Verity." It had simply become unthinkable to me that there was anything else that had a higher priority.
Several hungry days upriver of Tradeford is a town called Landing. While not nearly as large as Tradeford, it is a healthy settlement. Much good leather is made there, not just from cowhide, but from the tough pigskin of the haragar herds as well. The other main industry of the town seemed to be a fine pottery made from the banks of white clay that front the river. Much that one would expect to be made from wood or glass or metal elsewhere is made from leather or pottery in Landing. Not just shoes and gloves, but hats and other garments are of leather there, as are chair seats and even the roofs and walls of the stalls in the markets. In the shop windows I saw trenchers and candlesticks and even buckets made of finely glazed pottery, all inscribed or painted in a hundred styles and colors.
I also found, eventually, a small bazaar where one might sell whatever one had to sell and not be asked too many questions. I traded away my fine clothes for the loose trousers and tunic of a workingman, plus one pair of stockings. I should have got a better trade, but the man pointed out several brownish stains on the cuffs of the shirt that he believed would not come out. And the leggings were stretched from fitting me so poorly. He could launder them, but he was not sure he could get them back into their proper shape …. I gave it up and was content with the bargain I'd made. At least these clothes had not been worn by a murderer escaping from King Regal's mansion.
In a shop farther down the street I parted with the ring, the medallion, and the chain for seven silver bits and seven coppers. It was not near the passage fare to join a caravan to the Mountains, but it was the best offer of the six I'd had. The chubby little woman who bought them from me reached out timidly to touch my sleeve as I turned away.
"I'd not ask this, sir, save I can see you're in a desperate way," she began hesitantly. "So I pray you, take no offense at my offer."
"Which is?" I asked. I suspected she would offer to buy the sword. I had already decided I would not part with it. I would not get enough money for it to make it worth my while to go unarmed.
She gestured shyly toward my ear. "Your freeman's earring. I've a patron who collects such rarities. I believe that one is from the Butran Clan. Am I correct?" She asked it so hesitantly, as if expecting that at any moment I might fly into a rage.
"I do not know," I told her honestly: "It was a gift from a friend. It's not a thing I'd part with for silver."
She smiled knowingly, suddenly more confident. "Oh, I know we are speaking of golds for such a thing. I would not insult you with an offer of silvers. "
"Golds?" I asked incredulously. I reached to touch the small bauble at my ear. "For this?"
"Of course," she assented easily, thinking I was feeling for a bid. "I can see the workmanship is superior. Such is the reputation of the Butran Clan. There is also the rarity of it. The Butran Clan grants freedom to a slave but rarely. Even this far from Chalced, that is known. Once a man or woman wears the Butran tattoos, well …"
It took very little to draw her into a learned conversation about Chalced's slave trade and slave tattoos and freedom rings. It soon became apparent that she desired Burrich's earring, not for any patron, but for herself. She'd had an ancestor who had won his way out of slavery. She still possessed the freedom ring he'd been granted by his owners as the visible sign that he was no longer a slave. The possession of such an earring, correctly matching the last clan symbol tattooed on a slave's cheek, was the only way a former slave might move freely in Chalced, let alone leave that country. If a slave was troublesome, it was easily seen from the number of tattoos across the face, tracking the history of ownership. So that "mapface" was a byword for a slave that had been sold all over Chalced, a troublemaker fit for nothing but galley or mine work. She bade me take the earring off and truly look at it, at the fineness of the linked silver that made up the mesh that entrapped what was definitely a sapphire. "You see," she explained, "a slave has not only to win himself free, but to then earn from his master the cost of such an earring. For without it, his freedom is little more than an extended leash. He can go nowhere without being stopped at the checkpoints, can accept no freeman's work without the written consent of his former owner. The former master is no longer liable for his food or shelter, but the former slave has no such freedom from his old owner."
She offered me three golds without hesitation. That was more than caravan fare; I could have bought a horse, a good horse, and not only joined a caravan but traveled in comfort on that. Instead I left her shop before she would try to dissuade me with a higher offer. With a copper I bought a loaf of coarse bread and sat down to eat it near the docks. I wondered a great many things. The earring had probably been Burrich's grandmother's. He had mentioned she had been a slave but had won free of that life. I wondered what the earring had come to mean to him, that he had given it to my father, and what it had meant to my father that he had kept it. Had Patience known any of this when she had passed it on to me?
I am human. I tempted myself with her offer of golds. I reflected that if Burrich knew of my situation, he would tell me to go ahead and sell it, that my life and safety were worth more to him than an earring of silver and sapphire. I could get a horse and go to the Mountains and find Verity and put an end to the constant nagging of his Skill-order that was like an itch I could not scratch.
I stared out over the river and finally confronted the enormous journey before me. From here I must journey through near desert to get to Blue Lake. I had no idea how I would cross Blue Lake itself. On the other side, forest trails wound through the foothills up into the rugged lands of the Mountain Kingdom. To Jhaampe the capital city I must go, to somehow obtain a copy of the map Verity had used. It had been based on old writings in the Jhaampe library; perhaps the original was still there. Only it could lead me to Verity somewhere in the unknown territory beyond the Mountain Kingdom. I would need every coin, every resource I could command.
But despite all that, I decided to keep the earring. Not for what it meant to Burrich, but what it had come to mean to me. It was my last physical link to my past, to who I had been, to the man who had raised me, even to the father who had once worn it. It was oddly difficult to bring myself to do what I knew was wise. I reached up and undid the tiny catch that secured the earring to my ear. I still had the scraps of silk from my masquerade, and I used the smallest one to wrap the earring well and put it inside my belt pouch. The trader woman had been too interested in it and marked its appearance too well. If Regal did decide to send seekers after me, that earring would be one of the ways I'd be described.
Afterward I walked about the city, listening to folk talk and trying to learn what I needed to know without asking questions. I loitered in the marketplace, wandering from stall to stall idly. I allotted myself the lavish sum of four coppers, and spent them on what seemed exotic luxuries: a small bag of tea herbs, dried fruit, a piece of looking glass, a small cooking pot, and a cup. I asked at several herb stalls for elfbark, but either they did not know it or they knew it by another name in Farrow. I told myself it was all right, for I did not expect to have any need for its restorative powers. I hoped I was right. Instead I dubiously purchased something called sunskirt seeds, which I was assured would revive a man to wakefulness no matter how weary he might be.
I found a rag woman who let me go through her cart for two more coppers. I found a smelly but serviceable cloak and some leggings that promised to be as itchy as they were warm. I traded her my remaining scraps of yellow silk for a head kerchief, and with many leering remarks she showed me how to tie it about my head. I did as I had done before, making the cloak into a bundle to carry my things, and then went down to the slaughter yards east of town.
I had never encountered such a stench as I found there. There was pen after pen after pen of animals, veritable mountains of manure, the smell of blood and offal from the slaughter sheds, and the harsh stinks of the tannery pits. As if the assault on my nose was not enough, the air was likewise filled with the bawling of cattle, the squealing of haragars, the buzzing of the blowflies, and the shouts of the folk moving the animals from pen to pen or dragging them off to slaughter. Steel myself as I would, I could not insulate myself from the blind misery and panic of the waiting animals. They had no clear knowledge of what awaited them, but the smell of the fresh blood and the cries of the other beasts awoke in some of them a terror equivalent to what I had felt as I sprawled on the dungeon floor. Yet here I must be, for this was where the caravans ended, and also where some began. Folk who had driven animals here to sell would most likely be returning. Most would be buying other trade goods to take back with them, so as not to waste a trip. I had hopes of finding some sort of work with one of them that would gain me the companionship of a caravan at least as far as Blue Lake.
I soon found I was not the only one with such hopes. There was a ragtag hiring fair in a space between two taverns that fronted on the holding pens. Some of the folk there were herders who had come from Blue Lake with one herd, stayed in Landing to spend their earnings, and now, out of coin and far from home, were looking for passage back. For some of them, that was the pattern of their lives as drovers. There were a few youngsters there, obviously looking for adventure and travel and a chance to strike out on their own. And there were those who were obviously the dregs of the town, folk who could get no steady work, or had not the character to live in one place for long. I did not blend very well with any group, but I ended up standing with the drovers.
My tale was that my mother had recently died and turned over her estates to my older sister, who had little use for me. And so I had set out to travel to my uncle, who lived past Blue Lake, but my coin had run out before I had reached there. No, I'd not been a drover before, but we'd been wealthy enough to have horses, cattle, and sheep, and I knew the basic care of them and, so some said, "had a way" with dumb beasts.
I was not hired that day. Few were, and night found most of us bedding down right where we had stood all day. A baker's apprentice came amongst us with a tray of leftover wares, and I parted with another copper for a long loaf of dark bread studded with seeds. I shared it with a stout fellow whose pale hair kept creeping out of his kerchief and over his face. In return, Creece offered me some dried meat, a drink of the most appalling wine I'd ever tasted, and a great deal of gossip. He was a talker, one of those men who take the most extreme stance on any topic and have not conversations but arguments with their fellows. As I had little to say, Creece soon needled the other folk about us into a contentious discussion of the current politics in Farrow. Someone kindled a small fire, more for light than any need for warmth, and several bottles were passed about. I lay back, my head pillowed on my bundle, and pretended to be dozing as I listened.
There was no mention of the Red-Ships, no talk at all of the war that raged along the coast. I understood abruptly how much these folk would resent being taxed for troops to protect a coast they'd never even seen, for warships to sail an ocean they could not even imagine. The arid plains between Landing and Blue Lake were their ocean, and these drovers the sailors who traveled on it. The Six Duchies were not by nature six regions of land bound into a whole, but were a kingdom only because a strong line of rulers had fenced them together with a common boundary and decreed them to be one. Should all of the Coastal Duchies fall to the Red-Ships, it would mean little for these folk here. There would still be cattle to herd, and loathsome wine to drink; there would still be grass and the river and the dusty streets. Inevitably I must wonder what right we had to force these folk to pay for a war so far from their homes. Tilth and Farrow had been conquered and added to the duchies; they had not come to us asking for military protection or the benefits of trade. Not that they hadn't prospered, freed of all their petty inland herdlords and given an eager market for their beef and leather and rope. How much sailcloth, how many coils of good hemp rope had they sold before they were part of the Six Duchies? But it still seemed a minor return.
I grew weary of such thoughts. The only constant to their conversation was complaint about the trade embargo with the Mountains. I had begun to doze off when my ears pricked up to the words "Pocked Man." I opened my eyes and lifted my head slightly.
Someone had mentioned him in the traditional way, as the harbinger of disaster, laughingly saying that Hencil's sheep had all seen him, for they were dying in their pen before the poor man could even sell them. I frowned to myself at the thought of disease in such close quarters, but another man laughed and said that King Regal had decreed it was no longer bad luck to see the Pocked Man, but the greatest good that could befall one. "If I saw that old beggar, I'd not blanch and flee, but tackle him and take him to the King himself. He's offered one hundred golds to any man can bring him the Pocked Man from Buck."
"Was fifty, only fifty golds, not a hundred," Creece interrupted jeeringly. He took another drink from his bottle. "What a story, a hundred golds for a gray old man!"
"No, it's a hundred, for him alone, and another hundred for the manwolf that dogs his heels. I heard it cried anew just this afternoon. They crept into the King's Mansion at Tradeford, and slew some of his guard with Beast magic. Throats torn right out that the wolf might drink the blood. He's the one they want bad now. Dresses like a gentleman, they said, with a ring and a necklace and a silver dangle at his ear. Streak of white in his hair from an old battle with our king, and a scar down his face and a broken nose from the same. Yes, and a nice new sword-slash up his arm is what the King give him this time."
There was a low mutter of admiration from several of them at this. Even I had to admire Regal's audacity at claiming that, even as I turned my face back into my bundle and burrowed down as if to sleep. The gossip continued.
"Supposed to be Wit-bred, he is, and able to turn himself into a wolf whenever the moon is on him. They sleep by day and prowl by night, they do. It's said it's a curse put on the King by that foreigner queen he chased out of Buck for trying to steal the crown. The Pocked Man, it's told, is a half-spirit, charmed from the body of old King Shrewd by her Mountain magic, and he travels all the roads and streets, anywhere in the Six Duchies, bringing ill wherever he goes, and wearing the face of the old King himself."
"Dung and rot," Creece said disgustedly. He took another swig himself. But some of the others liked this wild tale and leaned closer, whispering for him to go on, go on.
"Well, that's what I heard," the storyteller said huffily. "That the Pocked Man is Shrewd's half-spirit, and he can't know any rest until the Mountain queen that poisoned him is in her grave as well."
"So, if the Pocked Man is Shrewd's ghost, why is King Regal offering a hundred golds' reward for him?" Creece asked sourly.
"Not his ghost. His half-spirit. He stole part of the King's spirit as he was dying, and King Shrewd can know no rest until the Pocked Man is dead so the King's spirit can be rejoined. And some say," and he dropped his voice lower, "that the Bastard was not killed well enough, that he walks again as a man-wolf. He and the Pocked Man seek vengeance against King Regal, to destroy the throne he could not steal. For he was in league to be king to the Vixen Queen once they'd done away with Shrewd."
It was the right sort of night for such a tale. The moon was swollen and orange and riding low in the sky, while the wind brought us the mournful lowing and shifting of the cattle in their pens mixed with the stench of rotting blood and tanning hides. High tattered clouds drifted from time to time across the face of the moon. The storyteller's words put a shiver up my back, probably for a different reason than he thought. I kept waiting for someone to nudge me with a foot, or cry out, "Hey, let's have a better look at him." No one did. The tone of the man's tale had them looking for wolf eyes in the shadows, not for a weary workman sleeping in their midst. Nonetheless, my heart was thudding in my chest as I looked back down my trail. The tailor where I'd traded clothes would recognize that description. Possibly the earring woman. Even the old rag woman who had helped me tie the kerchief over my hair. Some might not want to come forward, some might want to avoid dealing with the King's guards. Some would, though. I should behave as if they all would.
The speaker was going on, embroidering his tale of Kettricken's evil ambitions and how she had lain with me to conceive a child we could use to claim the throne. There was loathing in the storyteller's voice as he spoke of Kettricken, and no one scoffed at his words. Even Creece at my side was acquiescent, as if these bizarre plots were common knowledge. Confirming my worst fears, Creece spoke up suddenly.
"You tell it like it's all new, but all knew her big belly came not from Verity but from the Wit-Bastard. Had Regal not driven off the Mountain whore, we would eventually have had one like the Piebald Prince in line for the throne."
There was a low murmur of assent to this. I closed my eyes and lay back as if bored, hoping that my stillness and lowered lids could conceal the rage that threatened to consume me. I reached up to tug my kerchief more snugly about my hair. What could be Regal's purpose in letting such evil gossip be noised about? For I knew this kind of poison must come from him. I did not trust my voice to ask any questions, nor did I wish to appear ignorant of what was evidently common knowledge. So I lay still and listened with savage interest. I gathered that all knew Kettricken had returned to the Mountains. The freshness of the contempt they had for her suggested to me that this was recent news. There was muttering too that it was the fault of the Mountain witch that the passes were closed to honest Tilth and Farrow traders. One man even ventured to say that now that trade with the coast was shut down, the Mountains saw a chance to fence Farrow and Tilth in and force them to come to terms or lose all trade routes. One man recounted that even a simple caravan escorted by Six Duchies men in Regal's own colors had been turned back from the Mountain border.
To me, such talk was obviously stupid. The Mountains needed the trade with Farrow and Tilth. Grain was more important to the Mountain folk than the lumber and furs of the Mountains to these lowlanders. Such free trade had been openly admitted as a reason for wedding Kettricken to Verity. Even if Kettricken had fled back to the Mountains, I knew her well enough to be sure she would not support any cutting off of trade between her folk and the Six Duchies. She was too bonded to both groups, so intent on being Sacrifice for all of them. If there were a trade embargo as I had heard, I was sure it had begun with Regal. But the men about me grumbled on about the Mountain witch and her vendetta against the King.
Was Regal fomenting a war with the Mountains? Had he been attempting to send armed troops there under the guise of escorts for traders? It was a foolish idea. Long ago my father had been sent to the Mountains to formalize boundaries and trade agreements with them, marking the end of long years of border skirmishes and raids. Those years of battle had taught King Shrewd that no one was going to take and hold the Mountain Kingdom passes and trails by force. Unwillingly I followed that thought. Regal had been the one to suggest Kettricken as a bride for Verity. He had done all the courtier's work of wooing her for his brother. Then, as the time for the wedding drew near, he had attempted to kill Verity, with the aim of securing the Princess as his own bride. He had failed, and his plots and plans had been revealed to only a few. The chance for him to claim Princess Kettricken as his own, and all that went with her, such as her eventual inheritance of the Mountain crown, had slipped through his fingers. I recalled some talk I had once heard between Regal and the traitorous Galen. They had seemed to think that Tilth and Farrow would be best secured if they could control the Mountain ranges and passes that backed them. Did Regal now think to take by force what he had once hoped to claim by marriage? Did he think he could rally enough ill will against Kettricken to make his followers believe they were waging a just war, one of vengeance against a Mountain witch, one to keep open key trade routes?
Regal, I reflected, was capable of believing anything he wished to believe. In the depths of his cups, head wreathed with his Smokes, I did not doubt that he now believed his own wild tales. A hundred golds for Chade, and another hundred for me. I knew well enough what I had done lately to merit such a headprice, but I wondered keenly just what Chade had been up to. In all my years with Chade, he had always worked unnamed and unseen. He still had no name, but his pocked skin and resemblance to his half-brother were known now. That meant he had been seen somewhere, by someone. I hoped he was well and safe this night wherever he was. A part of me yearned to turn back, to return to Buck and track him down. As if somehow I could keep him safe.
Come to me.
No matter what I longed to do, no matter what I felt, I knew that first I would go to Verity. I promised myself that over and over and was finally able to drop off into a wary doze. I dreamed, but they were pale dreams, barely touched by the Skill, shifting and turning as if blown by the autumn winds. My mind seemed to have caught up and jumbled together thoughts of every person I missed. I dreamed of Chade taking tea with Patience and Lacey. He wore a robe of red silk patterned over with stars, cut in a very old style, and he smiled charmingly at the women over his cup and brought laughter even to Patience's eyes, although she looked strangely worn and weary. I then dreamed of Molly peeping out of a cottage door while Burrich stood outside it, pulling his cloak tight against the wind and telling her not to worry, he'd not be gone that long and any heavy chores could keep until he returned, that she should stay within doors and have only a care for herself. Even of Celerity did I dream, that she had taken shelter in the fabled Ice Caves of the Hungry Glacier in Bearns, and hid there with what troops she could still rally and many of her folk made homeless by the Raider wars. I dreamed she tended Faith, who lay suffering with a fever and a festering arrow wound in her belly. I dreamed finally of the Fool, his white face turned to ivory as he sat before a hearth and stared into the flames. There was no hope left in his face, and I felt that I was within the flames, looking deeply into his eyes. Somewhere nearby and yet not very near, Kettricken was weeping inconsolably. My dreams withered in my mind, and then I dreamed of wolves hunting, hunting, running down a buck, but they were wild wolves, and if my wolf was among them, he was theirs and mine no longer.
I awoke with a headache and a crick in my back from a stone I'd slept on. The sun had only begun to crack the sky, but I rose anyway, to go to a well and draw water for washing, and to drink as much as I could hold. Burrich had once told me that drinking a lot of water was a good way to stave off hunger. It was a theory I'd have to test today. I put an edge on my knife, considered shaving, then decided against it. Better to let my beard grow over the scar as swiftly as possible. I rubbed reluctantly at the coarse growth that already irritated me. I went back to where the others still slept.
They were just beginning to stir when a bulky little man appeared, to call shrilly that he would hire a man to help move his sheep from one pen to another. It was only a morning's work, if that, and most of the men shook their heads, wishing to remain where they might be hired for a drover's trip to Blue Lake. He almost pleaded, saying he must move the sheep through the city streets, hence he needed to get it done before the day's common traffic began. Finally, he offered to include breakfast, and I really think that was why I nodded to him and followed him. His name was Damon and he talked the whole time we walked, fluttering his hands about, explaining needlessly to me just how he wanted these sheep handled. They were good stock, very good stock, and he didn't want them injured or even flustered. Calmly, slowly, that was the best way to move sheep. I nodded wordlessly to his worrying and followed him to a pen far down the slaughter street.
It soon became apparent why he was so anxious to move his sheep. The next pen must have belonged to the luckless Hencil. A few sheep still baaed in that pen, but most of them were down, dead or dying of flux. The stench of their sickness added a new foul note to the other smells in the air. Some men were there, taking the skins off the dead animals to salvage what they could from the flock. They were making bloody, messy work of it, leaving the skinned dead animals right there in the pen with the dying ones. It reminded me in some gruesome way of a battlefield, with looters moving among the fallen. I turned my eyes from the sight and helped Damon bunch up his sheep.
Trying to use the Wit on sheep is almost a waste of time. They are flighty of thought. Even those ones who appear most placid are so because they have forgotten what they were thinking about. The worst of them are capable of an inordinate amount of wariness, becoming suspicious of the simplest act. The only way to deal with them is much as herd dogs do. Convince them they have had a good idea about where they wish to go, and encourage them in it. I amused myself briefly by considering how Nighteyes would have bunched up and moved these woolly fools, but my even thinking of a wolf caused a few of them to halt in their tracks suddenly and glance about wildly. I suggested to them they should follow the others before they were lost, and they started as if surprised at the notion, then crowded in amongst the rest of the sheep.
Damon had given me a general idea of where we were going, and a long stick. I worked the back and sides of the flock, running and soon panting like a dog, while he led the way and kept the flock from scattering at every intersection. He took us to an area on the outskirts of town, and we put the sheep into one of the ramshackle pens there. Another pen held a very fine red bull, while there were six horses in yet another. After we had caught our breath, he explained that tomorrow a caravan would be forming up here to travel to Blue Lake. He had bought these sheep just yesterday, and intended to take them to his home there to add to his flocks. I asked him if he might want another hand to herd the sheep to Blue Lake, and he gave me a considering look but no answer.
He was as good as his word about breakfast. We had porridge and milk, plain fare that tasted wonderfully good to me. It was served to us by a woman who lived in a house near the holding pens and made her living keeping watch over the animals penned there and providing meals and sometimes beds for those in charge of them. After we had eaten, Damon laboriously explained to me that yes, he was in need of an extra hand, possibly two, for the trip, but that he judged by the cut of my clothes that I knew little of the type of work I was seeking. He'd taken me on this morning because I was the only one who looked really awake and eager for the work. I told him my story of my heartless sister, and assured him that I was familiar with handling sheep, horses, or cattle: After much dithering and druthering, he hired me. His terms were that he would provide my food for the journey, and at the end of it would pay me ten silver bits. He told me to run and fetch my things and say my goodbyes, but to be certain to be back here by the evening, or he would hire another to take my place.
"I have nothing to fetch, and no one to bid goodbye to," I told him. It would not be wise to go back to town, not after what I'd heard last night. I wished the caravan were leaving right now.
For an instant he looked shocked, but then decided he was well pleased. "Well, I have both to attend to, so I shall leave you here to watch over the sheep. They'll need water hauled to them; that was one reason I was leaving them in the town pens, they've a pump there. But I didn't like to have them so near sick sheep. You haul them water, and I'll send a man out with a cart of hay for them. See you give them a good feed. Now, mind, I'll judge how we are to go on together by how you begin with me …." And so on and so on he went, telling me to the last detail how he wished the animals watered, and how many separate piles of feed to make to be sure each animal got a share. I suppose it was to be expected; I did not look like a shepherd. It made me miss Burrich, and his calm assumption that I would know my business and do it. As he was turning to go, he suddenly turned back. "And your name, lad?" he called to me.
"Tom," I said after an instant's hesitation. Patience had thought once to call me that, before I had accepted the name FitzChivalry. The reflection called to mind something Regal had once flung at me. "You have to but scratch yourself to find Nameless the dogboy," he'd sneered. I doubted he would think Tom the shepherd much above that.
There was a dug well, not very near the pens, with a very long rope to its bucket. By working constantly, I finally managed to get the water trough filled. Actually, I filled it several times before the sheep allowed it to remain filled. About then, a cart with hay arrived, and I carefully created four separate piles of feed in the corners of the pen. It was another exercise in frustration, as the sheep bunched and fed off each pile as I created it. It was only after all but the weakest were satiated that I could finally establish a pile in each corner.
I whiled away the afternoon with drawing more water. The woman gave me the use of a large kettle to heat it, and a private place where I could wash the worst of the road from my body. My arm was healing well. Not bad for a deadly injury, I told myself, and hoped Chade would never hear of my blundering. How he would laugh at me. When I was clean, I fetched more water to heat, this for washing out the clothes I'd bought from the rag woman. I discovered the cloak was actually a much lighter gray than I had thought it. I could not get all the smell out of it, but by the time I hung it to dry, it smelled more of wet wool and less of its previous owner.
Damon had left me no provision for food, but the woman offered to feed me if I would haul the water for the bull and the horses, as it was a chore she'd grown much weary of doing for the last four days. So I did, and earned myself a dinner of stew and biscuits and a mug of ale to wash it all down. Afterward I checked on my sheep. Finding them all placid, habit made me turn to the bull and the horses. I stood leaning on the fence, watching the animals, wondering how it would be if this were all there was to my life. It made me realize that it would not have been bad, not if there'd been a woman like Molly waiting for me to come home at night. A rangy white mare came over to rub her nose up my shirt and beg to be scratched. I petted her and found her missing a freckled farmgirl who had brought her carrots and called her Princess.
I wondered if anyone, anywhere, got to live the life he'd wanted. Perhaps Nighteyes finally had. I truly hoped so. I wished him well, but was selfish enough to hope that sometimes he'd miss me. Sullenly I wondered if perhaps that was why Verity had not come back. Maybe he'd just got sick of the whole business of crowns and thrones and kicked over all his traces. But even as I thought it, I knew it was not so. Not that one. He'd gone to the Mountains to rally the Elderlings to our aid. And if he'd failed at that task, then he'd think of another way. And whatever it was, he'd called me to help him do it.